Monday, 31 December 2018

Latest Update Supreme Court Order dated 17 May 2018"Let the Registry act in accordance with the earlier ordersdated 27.10.2017 and 07.02.2018 with regard to service on theAttorney General of India also, within a period of two weeks. This matter was listed for hearing before the Supreme Court of India on 26 March 2018, when the following order was passed."Issue notice on the applications as well as on the appeal,returnable on 13.07.2018.The Registry is directed to issue notice also to the AttorneyGeneral of India."

This matter was listed for hearing before the Supreme Court of India on 7 February 2018, on 5 February 2018, on 4 December 2017, on 20 November 2017, and on 27 October 2017. I am appearing before the Supreme Court in this matter in person. ----------------------------------------------I filed the criminal appeal (reproduced below) in the Supreme Court of India on 19 March 2016 under Diary No. 10342. Seema Sapra General Electric Company whistleblower

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA

CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. OF
2016

IN THE MATTER OF

SEEMA SAPRA …Appellant/Petitioner

Versus

COURT ON ITS OWN MOTION … Respondent

To

Hon'ble The Chief Justice of India and His Companion
Judges of the Supreme Court of India., the appeal/ petition of the Appellant/
Petitioner most respectfully showeth :-

1. This is a
Criminal Appeal under Section 19(1) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 from
the judgment dated 17.12.2015 of the Delhi High Court in CONT. CAS(CRL) 2/2014,
hereinafter referred to as the impugned judgment. This appeal is filed with a
delay of 32 days beyond the 60-day period prescribed in
Section 19. An application for condonation of delay is also filed. The impugned
judgment dated 17.12.2015 of the Delhi High Court in CONT. CAS(CRL) 2/2014
(Court on its own motion vs. Seema Sapra) is annexed hereto as Annexure A-1.

2. By the
impugned judgment, the appellant has been found guilty of contempt of court.
The impugned judgment has imposed a punishment of imprisonment for a period of
one month; and in addition a fine of Rs. 2,000/- to be deposited within a
period of three months with the Registrar General of the Delhi High Court
failing which the appellant will undergo a further term of imprisonment of one
month. The impugned judgment has further directed that the appellant, an
advocate enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi will not be allowed to argue,
whether as an Advocate or in person, except in her defence, before any Bench of
this High Court or any court or tribunal subordinate to this High Court for a
period of two years. The impugned judgment has directed that a copy of that
judgment be sent to the Registry of the Delhi High Court and to all subordinate
courts and tribunals, and further that a copy of that judgment be also sent to
the Delhi Bar Council for information. The impugned judgment itself directed
that the operative part pertaining to imposition of punishment would not
operate for a period of three months from 17.12.2015 to enable the “contemnor”
to take appropriate steps to exercise her legal remedy.

3. This appeal
being filed in person by the appellant begins with a prayer, because the only
reason that the appellant-whistleblower-advocate has survived almost six
complete years of on-going attempts to eliminate her is because of her prayers.

4. At the
outset, the appellant/petitioner states that being a woman lawyer, she has the
greatest respect for both the judiciary and the rule of law. As a whistleblower
who complied with her ethical duty of upholding the rule of law even under
grave life threats, it is evident that the appellant takes the law seriously. The
appellant holds the judiciary and the judicial function in great respect. She
has never sought and will never seek a confrontation with the judiciary. She
has never intended to scandalize or to disrespect the judiciary or the Court or
to bring it into disrepute.

5. This appeal
challenging a judgment of the Delhi High Court in a criminal contempt
proceeding has its genesis in a whistleblower right to life petition that the
appellant had filed in the Delhi High Court i.e., Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/
2012 in the matter of Seema Sapra v. General Electric Company and Others
(hereinafter referred to as the “Writ Petition”).
6. This appeal will establish that
the appellant is a whistleblower, a lawyer who worked in 2010 for General
Electric Company in India and who was compelled to make whistleblower
complaints when her legal services were sought to be used for corrupt practices
including fraud, forgery, bribery, illegal lobbying etc. in connection with
Indian Railway tenders for rail locomotive factories at Marhowra and Madhepura.
This appeal will establish that attempts were made to eliminate the appellant
with State authorities including the Police and intelligence agencies being
used to target and silence the appellant. The appellant managed to file an
Article 226 petition in the Delhi High Court. This appeal will establish that
this petition languished unheard in the Delhi High Court for 3 years while the
appellant continued to be destroyed, physically harmed, attacked, intimidated,
harassed, targeted and threatened. This Appeal will establish that a Division
Bench of the Delhi High Court wrongfully dismissed that Petitionby a judgment
dated 2.3.2015 without hearing the appellant who was the petitioner in that
matter in complete violation of the principles of natural justice. This appeal
will establish that the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court wrongfully
dismissed the whistleblower corruption case against General Electric Company in
complete disregard of the material on record before it, in complete disregard
of the law and in complete disregard of the appellant’s right to life. This
appeal will establish that this unsustainable and wrongful dismissal of the
writ petition resulted in a cover-up of very serious complaints and evidence of
corruption by and favouring General Electric Company facilitated by then Prime
Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and his close aide and then Deputy Chairman of the
Planning Commission Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia. This appeal will establish that
the wrongful dismissal of the Writ Petition and the denial of a hearing to the
appellant in that matter resulted in gross injustice, and a cover up of
attempts to murder the appellant, a cover-up of the fact that the appellant was
poisoned, a cover-up of State and police participation in the conspiracy and
attempts to silence and eliminate the appellant, a cover-up of the severe
targeting that the appellant was subjected to and a cover up of the gross
violation of the appellant’s right to life. This appeal will establish that the
wrongful dismissal of the Writ Petition has resulted in the appellant
continuing to be poisoned for the last one year since 2.3.2015, and continuing
to be targeted, harassed, intimidated, threatened, defamed and destroyed. This
appeal will further establish that a mind-boggling fraud was perpetrated on the
Delhi High Court in Writ Petition Civil 1280/ 2012 where an unauthorized person
effectively impersonated as the authorised signatory of General Electric
Company and two of its subsidiaries and filed patently false and unauthorized
affidavits and that the wrongful dismissal of the Writ Petition results in a
cover up of this massive fraud on the Court. This appeal will further establish
that affidavits filed for the Railway Ministry in the Writ Petition contained
multiple instances of perjury and included documents fabricated expressly for
the purpose of covering up the corruption by General Electric. Further this appeal
will establish that affidavits and status reports filed for the Delhi Police in
the Writ petition also contained multiple instances of perjury, and that these
affidavits and status reports themselves establish that the police was
targeting the appellantand besides actively facilitating her being physically
harmed, the police covered up her complaints and fabricated and procured false
complaints against her.

7. The same
Division Bench of the Delhi High Court which dismissed the Writ Petition (
Justice Valmiki Mehta and Justice P.S. Teji) then proceeded to hear two
criminal contempt proceedings which were instituted against the appellant while
the Writ Petition was pending and which arose out of facts connected to the
hearing of the Writ Petition. This same Division Bench has now after rejecting
the appellant’s request for recusal, ruled against the appellant in one of the
contempt cases and again without permitting the appellant to file a written
reply, without hearing the appellant or affording her an opportunity to defend
herself has issued the impugned judgment holding the appellant guilty of
contempt of court and imposing an extraordinarily harsh punishment on the
appellant which includes sentencing her to imprisonment.

8. The appellant
states that she has managed to survive for 6 years fighting alone but itis
certain that she will be drugged and poisoned in prison and will come out from
prison both mentally and physically damaged and incapacitated. It is also
certain that this incarceration will be used to falsify medical records for the
appellant and to cover up the fact that she has been chronically poisoned, and
that this poisoning has caused organ damage and to cover up the fact that the
appellant’s left ankle was deliberately dislocated in June 2014. The impugned
judgment will result in facilitation of the elimination of the whistleblower
appellant and in silencing her.

9. This appeal
will establish that the impugned judgment in the contempt case is wrong in law
and on facts, that it has been issued in violation of the principles of natural
justice and without hearing the appellant and without providing her even the
most limited opportunity to defend herself. This appeal will establish that the
impugned contempt judgment misrecords not only the facts but also the
appellant’s submissions and defence. This appeal will establish that the
impugned judgment is contrary to law and to the relevant material before the
court.

10. The appellant
does not want to comment on the conduct of the specific Division Bench of the
Delhi High Court, but this appeal will establish that the judgments of this particular
Division Bench both in the Writ Petition and in the contempt case are wrong,
contrary to law and to the material on record, and are unsustainable and
perverse.

11. The record
of Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 is relevant to this appeal but is very
voluminous. The appellant will place the record of the writ petition before
this Hon’ble Court in electronic format on a DVD.

A copy of the judgment in the Writ Petition Civil No.
1280/2012 is being filed in a separate volume.

12. A copy of
the appellant’s cv showing her educational and professional achievements as in
2010 when the appellant ended up as a whistleblower is reproduced below.

Associate in the
office of Soli J Sorabjee, Attorney General of India, 2000-2001

Empanelled lawyer
for the Government of India in the Supreme Court of India and the High Court
of Delhi in 1999-2001

Lawyer with the
litigation law firm of M/s Karanjawala & Co. in New Delhi, 1995-2000

Extensive
litigation experience in the Supreme Court of India, the High Court of Delhi,
and various special tribunals.

Policy expertise

International
Trade

Bilateral and
regional trade agreements

Investment
policy, bilateral investment treaties

Climate change
and sustainable development

Energy efficiency
and climate change

Innovation
policy, technology transfer and intellectual property

Competition
policy

Teaching
Experience

LLM tutor for the
World Trade Law joint course at University College London and the School of
Oriental and African Studies (2007)

Contract law
tutor for 1st Year LLB at the University of Westminster, School of Law as a
part-time visiting lecturer (2007)

Guest lectures
for the LLM program at Kings College London and University of Leicester law
school

Education

PhD studies at
Kings College London 2003-2007 (not completed)

Title of proposed
thesis: The Place, Treatment, and Meaning of Development in the WTO

Research
supervisor - Professor Piet Eeckhout, Kings College London

3 year research
fellowship by the Centre for European Law, Kings College London

LLM in Public
International Law with distinction at the University of Leicester, 2001-2003

British Chevening
scholar

LLB from the
Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi - Ist Division. 1995

Diploma in
Environmental Law from the Centre for Environmental Law, WWF-India -1994-1995

B. A. Honors in
English Literature from St Stephen's College, University of Delhi - 1992

Editorial
Assistant for the Journal of International Economic law, 2004-2005 based at
Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC

Internship with
the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania 2002-2003

Publications

Article titled
“Sustainable Development and the role of the Indian Supreme Court”, ASERI
(Milan) publication, 2009

Article titled
“An Agenda for Teaching International Economic Law in Indian Law Schools”,
Indian Journal of International Economic Law, 2009, National Law School,
Bangalore

Article titled
“The WTO System of Trade Governance: The Stale NGO Debate and the Appropriate
Role for Non-state actors” in Oregon Review of International Law Journal,
volume 11 issue 1, 2009

Chapter titled
‘Domestic Politics and the Search for a New Social Purpose of Governance for
the WTO: A Proposal for a Declaration on Domestic Consultation’ in Debra
Steger (ed.) Redesigning the World Trade Organization for the Twenty-first
Century, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009

Chapter titled
‘New Agendas for International Economic Law Teaching in India: Including an
Agenda in Support of Reform’ in Colin
B. Picker, Isabella Bunn & Douglas Arner, (ed.) INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC
LAW - THE STATE & FUTURE OF THE DISCIPLINE, Hart Publishing, 2008

‘Ideas of
Embedded Liberalism and Current and Future Challenges for the WTO’, in Ortino and Ripinsky, WTO Law and
Process, British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2007. pg 330
- 352

Development: Its
Place, Treatment, and Meaning at the WTO / Seema Sapra (2006). In:
Proceedings of the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting, Vol.
100, pg 223-226

Papers /
Conferences

Presented paper
titled “An Indian perspective on sustainable development: the role of the
Indian higher judiciary” at panel discussion at ASERI, Milan in December 2008

Panelist for EDGE
network panel on WTO Institutional Reform at the Inaugural conference of the
Society for International Economic Law, Geneva, 15-17 July 2008

Presented paper
titled “Developing Countries and Outreach to Non-State Actors in the WTO”, at
an EDGE network project workshop on WTO institutional reform in March 2008 at
Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Ontario.

Presented paper
titled “The Case for International Economic Law Teaching in India: Possible
Agendas Including an Agenda in Support of Reform” at the Annual Conference of the
International Economic Law Interest Group of the American Society of
International Law at Bretton Woods in November, 2006

Panelist at the
sixth Annual WTO Conference hosted by the British Institute of International
and Comparative Law in May 2006, on the topic “Doha Development Round:
Current and Future Challenges”

Presented paper
titled “Development - Its Place, Treatment and Meaning at the WTO” at the
100th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, Washington
D.C. 2006.

Presented paper
titled “Special and Differential Treatment in international trade law” at the
Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL), Georgetown University Law
Center in September 2005

Presented paper
titled “Constructivism and Special and Differential Treatment in
international trade law” at the 2005 conference of the International Law
Association, British Branch held at Edinburgh in May 2005

Memberships

Bar Council of
Delhi

Society of
International Economic Law

Asian WTO
Research Network

13. Questions
relevant for this appeal

Is the Appellant a whistleblower? What are the complaints
of corruption and what is the evidence?

Has the Appellant been targeted?

Has the Appellant been physically harmed?

Is there a continuing threat to the life of the
Appellant?

Has the Indian State, including the Police participated
in covering up the corruption complaints and in targeting the appellant-whistleblower?

What were the events of 6.5.2014, the date on which the
appellant is stated to have committed contempt of court?

Did the Appellant have an opportunity to defend herself
in the Contempt case? Was she given a fair hearing in accordance with law
before she was found guilty of contempt?

What is the appellant’s response to the contempt notice
against her?

Is the punishment accorded by the impugned judgment fair
and reasonable?

14. Before
proceeding further, the appellant reproduces below an email sent by her on
6.5.2014 setting out what happened on that date. A copy of this email was filed
by the appellant on the Court record of Writ Petition Civil. No. 1280/2012 and
of CONT. CAS(CRL) 2/2014 in the Delhi High Court.

----------
Forwarded message ----------

From: Seema Sapra
<seema.sapra@googlemail.com>

Date: Tue, May 6,
2014 at 8:10 PM

Subject: Ref:
Corruption Complaint against Delhi High Court Judges J. Ravindra Bhat; J. S
Muralidhar and J. Vibhu Bakhru in connection with Whistle-blower corruption
and right to life Writ Petition pending in the Delhi High Court since
February 2012 – Writ Petition (Civil) 1280/ 2012

not only being
harassed and targeted with police complicity during the

night but I am
also being poisoned by deliberate exposure to toxic

chemical,
including nerve agents and organophosphates, during the

night. I fear for
my life. I have been waking up breathless during the

night on account
of such poisoning, and I apprehend that if this

continues, it
will result in cessation of breathing and will cause

death; and I
further apprehend that the police will then be used to

cover up such
murder. I have been making police complaints about these

incidents since
January 2014 in writing but the police has failed to

even respond to
these complaints. In view of this, I am making an oral

request to this
Hon?ble Court that it issue the directions to the

Registrar General
of this Court; to the Delhi Police Commissioner; and

to the local SHO;
to ensure that the CCTV security camera recordings

maintained both
by the Court and by the police in the area where I am

parking my car at
night and along the roads leading to that spot; be

preserved,
because this will be valuable evidence in support of my

complaints to the
police. I have been informed by the Delhi Police

security that
such recordings are normally preserved only for a month.

I am, therefore,
seeking directions from this Court that these

recordings be
preserved for longer than that until my complaints are

addressed and
investigated. I am also submitting that such an order

will also result
in providing me some measure of protection because

those harming me,
including the police, will get the message that the

evidence of what
is going on around my car during the night is being

preserved
pursuant to the directions of this Court. This is my request

orally.

Further, I have
also requested the Hon'ble Court to direct the

Registrar General
to preserve CCTV footage from the three court

lobbies today
because I noticed that a policeman was instructing two

other policemen
to target me; and CCTV footage might provide evidence

of contact
between the General Electric lawyers and those policemen.

Further, one Sub
Inspector Umed Singh from Police Station Nizamuddin,

who is present in
Court, was also seen by me speaking with General

Electric lawyers
outside the Court."

We have recorded
the above verbatim so that there may be no doubt

about the
submissions of the petitioner, who also happens to be a

qualified and
practicing Advocate registered at the Bar.

This matter has
been pending for some time. There is extensive

controversy
raised by the petitioner on almost every aspect of the

matter.
Apparently, she is also making serious allegations against the

respondents
including the Police Authorities to the extent of alleging

a deliberate
intent to murder her in a premeditated conspiracy.

Under the
circumstances, it is open to the petitioner to file an

appropriate
application seeking specific reliefs so that an

appropriate
response can also be obtained from the concerned

respondents on
every allegation made by the petitioner. As and when

such an
application is moved, the same shall be duly considered by

this Court.

We have now
invited the petitioner to continue where she left off on

the previous date
of hearing.

We have heard the
petitioner from 3:50 PM to 5:31 PM.

Re-notify on
24.04.2014 at 3:30 PM.

SUDERSHAN KUMAR MISRA, J

S.P. GARG, J

15. Before
addressing the impugned judgment in the contempt matter, it is important to
emphasize that the appellant is a whisteblower facing a serious life threat.
Not only does she have a dislocated ankle at present, she has also been
chronically poisoned since 2010. The petitioner has been subjected to poisonous
chemical fumes/ gases and inhalants and this has increased in intensity over
the last one year and the last few months and days. The petitioner’s lungs have
been damaged and are in a worse condition than that of a Bhopal gas survivor.
Other internal organs and body systems have also likely suffered damage from
the chronic poisoning. The petitioner’s hair and nails can be tested to
establish such chronic poisoning.

16. The genesis
of the matter - The appellant worked as in-house counsel for General Electric
Company’s business division GE Transportation in India in 2010. She was
advising General Electric on its bids for two multi-billion dollar tenders
floated by the Railway Ministry to set up diesel and electric locomotive
factories and for long-term purchase orders for locomotives. During the course
of her work the Appellant discovered multiple instances of corrupt and criminal
activities that General Electric executives were engaged in as part of their
efforts to secure the tender for the diesel locomotive factory at Marhowra. The
Appellant became a threat to these General Electric executives and lawyers and
she was drugged. The Appellant raised compliance related concerns during her
employment with General Electric as a whistleblower and this resulted in
retaliation including the wrongful termination of her contract in complete
violation of General Electric’s own internal policies. The Appellant continued
to pursue her complaints even after her contract was terminated and reported
the violations to the relevant authorities both in India and in the United
States. The appellant continued to be poisoned and drugged while General
Electric in a sham internal investigation covered up the appellant’s
complaints. All through 2011 and through January and February 2012 the
appellant was drugged, poisoned, and isolated. Finally, in February 2012, the
appellant managed to file Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012 in the Delhi High
Court.

17. The relief
claimed in Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012

1. Summon the records of Respondent Nos.
2, 4 and 5 on the whistle-blower complaints made by the Petitioner and after
examining the records and hearing the Respondents, issue a writ of mandamus
to Respondent 4 directing that Respondent 7 be disqualified and Respondent
Nos. 1, 6 and 7 be black-listed from the Diesel and Electric Locomotive
Tenders (Global RFQ No. 2010/ ME (Proj)/ 4/ Marhoura/RFQ and RFQ No. 2010/
Elect. (Dev0 440/1(1)).

2. Issue writs of mandamus to Respondent
Nos. 2, 4 and 5 directing them to respond to and act upon the said
whistle-blower complaints in accordance with law.

3. Direct that Respondent No. 2 inquire
into the commission of criminal offences (including forgery, bribery and
public corruption) arising out of the Petitioner’s whistle-blower
complaints and direct prosecution of
GE employees and government officials and public servants found involved and
complicit.

4. Enforce and protect the right to life
of the Petitioner and direct that the Petitioner be provided full protection
and safety and be immediately relocated to a safe house.

5. Pass such other and further orders as
this Hon’ble Court may deem fit and proper.

General Electric
Company is a large conglomerate incorporated in the United States. Notice was
issued by the Delhi High Court to General Electric Company on 7.3.2012.

Advocate Nanju
Ganpathy appeared on 9.5.2012 claiming to represent General Electric Company
and continued to appear thereafter. Mr Nanju Ganpathy is a Partner in the
law-firm AZB & Partners.

Affidavits were
filed on behalf of General Electric Company through one K Radhakrishnan on
3.7.2012 and 3.8.2012. No authority documents establishing K Radhakrishnan as
authorized signatory of General Electric Company were produced.

At Appellant's
request, order dated 12.10.2012 directed Nanju Ganpathy to produce authority
documents to show that K Radhakrishnan was authorized signatory of General
Electric Company.

Nanju Ganpathy
filed a photocopy of a document self-describing as a Power of Attorney
executed by one Alexander Dimitrief on 4.5.2012. This document had a validity
of one year.

Appellant
discovered that no vakalatnama had been filed so Appellant moved CM 19370/
2012 (on 6 December 2012).

Electronic case
history maintained by the Delhi High Court registry shows a vakalatnama was
filed only on 7.12.2012.

CM 19683/2012
filed by Appellant on 14.12.2012 pointing out that the vakalatnama dated
7.12.2012 was invalid and did not annex the required authority documents.

A new
vakalatnama filed on 17.12.2012. This vakalatnama was signed by K Radhakrishnan
claiming to be authorised signatory for General Electric Company under a
Power of Attorney (POA) dated 4.5.2012 issued in his favour by Alexander
Dimitrief of General Electric Company.

Affidavit of K
Radhakrishnan filed on 7.1.2013 producing an extract from the Board Minutes
of General Electric Company (last revised on November 6, 2009) containing a
Board Resolution (hereinafter referred to as the Board Resolution) which
describes and limits the authority of individuals to sign documents (including
court pleadings) on behalf of General Electric Company.

Nanju Ganpathy
filed another vakalatnama for General Electric Company on 16.7.2013. This
vakalatnama was allegedly signed by Bradford Berenson on 9.5.2013.

Attached to this
vakalatnama dated 16.7.2013 was a photocopy of a document self-describing as
a power of attorney allegedly executed on 29 April 2013 by Bradford Berenson
on behalf of General Electric Company and apostilled in the United States on
10 May 2013. This was also only valid for one year.

In any event,
since the Power of Attorney dated 29.4.2013 was valid only for one year, it
ceased to have legal effect from 30.4.2014 onwards.

Therefore, even
without going into the authenticity and legal validity of the authority
documents and vakalatnamas filed on behalf of General Electric Company, it is
clear that General Electric Company was not legally represented by anyone
before the Delhi High Court in Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012 from
30.4.2014 onwards.

Issues
concerning these authority documents and vakalatnamas

1. Were
the Powers of Attorneys dated 4.5.2012 and 29.4.2013 allegedly executed by
Alexander Dimitrief and Bradford Berenson lawful and valid authority
documents whereby K Radhakrishnan was appointed as the authorized signatory
of General Electric Company for the purpose of Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/
2012 before the Delhi High Court?

2. Were
these documents placed on the court record by Nanju Ganpathy genuine or
fraudulent?

3. Did
K Radhakrishnan impersonate as the authorized signatory of General Electric
Company before the Delhi High Court and file unauthorized and false
affidavits?

4. Was
Advocate Nanju Ganpathy authorized to represent and appear for General
Electric Company?

Who is K
Radhakrishnan?

K Radhakrishnan
is not an employee of General Electric Company. He has described himself in
his affidavits as the company secretary of GE India Industrial Private
Limited, a fully owned Indian subsidiary of General Electric Company.

Who is Alexander
Dimitrief?

Alexander
Dimitrief was Vice President, Litigation & Legal Policy of General
Electric Company from 9 February 2007 until November 1, 2011 when he was
appointed as General Counsel of GE Energy. Alexander Dimitrief has been
appointed as General Counsel of General Electric Company with effect from
1.11.2015.

Who is Bradford
Berenson.

Mr Bradford
Berenson was appointed as the Operational Officer for Litigation & Legal
Policy for General Electric Company on 15 October 2012.

Were the Powers
of Attorney dated 4.5.2012 and 29.4.2013 allegedly executed by Alexander
Dimitrief and Bradford Berenson legal and valid in law?

The authority of
individuals to sign documents (including court pleadings) on behalf of
General Electric Company emanates from Board Resolution dated 26.4.1988 as
incorporated in the Board Minutes of General Electric Company (last revised
on November 6, 2009).

Under this Board
Resolution, both Alexander Dimitrief and Bradford Berenson had the authority
to sign court pleadings and powers of attorney on behalf of General Electric
Company for litigation purposes but they had no authority to further delegate
this authority to anyone.

General Electric
Company's Board Resolution dated 26.4.1988 stipulates in Paragraph A
that certain types of documents/ instruments including court pleadings and
powers of attorney can only be signed on behalf of General Electric Company
by

(i) corporate
officers of the Company who are identified by position as "Authorized
Persons";

(ii) by an
Operational Officer of the Company where such document pertains to the
component or function to which such officer is assigned;

(iii) by
a Manager or Acting Manager of the relevant Division or Department of
General Electric Company.

K Radhakrishnan
is not an employee of General Electric Company and Alexander Dimitrief and
Bradford Berenson had no authority to delegate to K Radhakrishnan any
authority to execute either court pleadings or powers of attorney on behalf
of General Electric Company in relation to Writ Petition Civil No. 1290/2012
filed in the Delhi High Court.

The Powers of
Attorney dated 4.5.2012 and 29.4.2013 executed by Alexander Dimitrief and
Bradford Berenson respectively were therefore illegal and invalid documents
and which therefore conferred no authority upon K Radhakrishnan to represent
himself as the authorized signatory of General Electric Company before the
Delhi High Court.

K Radhakrishnan
therefore effectively impersonated as the authorized signatory of General
Electric Company and the affidavits filed by him before the Delhi High Court
were unauthorized, false and perjurious.

Brackett
Denniston (who retired as General Counsel of General Electric Company on
31.10.2015), Alexander Dimitrief and Bradford Berenson knowingly participated
in a criminal obstruction of justice conspiracy to falsify powers of attorney
with intent to enable K Radhakrishna to unlawfully impersonate as the
authorized signatory of General Electric Company before the Delhi High Court
in a whistleblower litigation involving complaints and evidence of corruption
by General Electric Company. K Radhakrishnan was used to commit a fraud on
the Delhi High Court, on the Government of India and on General Electric
Company itself. K Radhakrishnan was used to sign and file false and
unauthorized affidavits in the Delhi High Court.

Information
about this litigation was suppressed by Brackett Denniston, Alexander
Dimitrief, Bradford Berenson and Jeffrey Eglash, all senior level in-house
lawyers for General Electric Company.

GE India
Industrial Private Limited is a wholly owned Indian subsidiary of the US
conglomerate General Electric Company. Notice was issued by the Delhi High
Court to GE India Industrial Private Limited on 7.3.2012.

Advocate Nanju
Ganpathy appeared on 9.5.2012 claiming to represent GE India Industrial
Private Limited and continued to appear thereafter. Mr Nanju Ganpathy is a
Partner in the law-firm AZB & Partners.

Affidavits were
filed on behalf of GE India Industrial Private Limited through one K
Radhakrishnan on 3.7.2012 and 3.8.2012. No authority documents establishing K
Radhakrishnan as authorized signatory of GE India Industrial Private Limited
were produced.

The counter-
affidavit of K Radhakrishnan dated 3.7.2012 merely stated that K
Radhakrishnan was the authorized signatory of GE India Industrial Private
Limited. The affidavit contained a verification clause which was signed but
not affirmed before an oath commissioner. Another two-page affidavit of K
Radhakrishnan was attached to this counter-affidavit which merely stated that
K Radhakrishnan was the authorised signatory of GE India Industrial Private
Limited in the matter “pursuant to the powers of attorney executed in my
favour in this regard”. No power of attorney nor any other authority document
was annexed to this counter-affidavit which otherwise contained thirteen
annexures with the affidavit itself running into 206 pages.

At Appellant's
request, Delhi High Court order dated 12.10.2012 directed Nanju Ganpathy to
produce authority documents to show that K Radhakrishnan was authorized
signatory of GE India Industrial Private Limited.

Nanju Ganpathy
filed a photocopy of a document on 19.10.2012 which was described as a board
resolution dated 7 May 2012 passed by GE India Industrial Private Limited
which was effective up to 31.3.2013. No power of attorney was produced for GE
India Industrial Private Limited.

Appellant
discovered that no vakalatnama had been filed so Appellant moved CM 19370/
2012 (on 6 December 2012).

Electronic case
history maintained by the Delhi High Court registry shows a vakalatnama was
filed only on 7.12.2012.

The Supreme
Court of India in Uday Shankar Triyar v. Ram Kalewar Prasad Singh [(2006) 1
SCC 75] has ruled that a vakalatnama on behalf of a company must either bear
the company seal or it must mention the name and designation of the person
signing the vakalatnama (on behalf of the company) below the signature AND a
copy of the authority must be annexed to the vakalatnama. The Supreme Court
further ruled that if a vakalatnama is executed by a power-of-attorney holder
of a party, the failure to disclose that it is being executed by an attorney
holder and the failure to annex a copy of the power of attorney will render
the vakalatnama defective.

CM 19683/2012
filed by Appellant on 14.12.2012 pointing out that the vakalatnama dated
7.12.2012 was invalid and did not annex the required authority documents.

A new
vakalatnama filed on 17.12.2012. This vakalatnama was signed by K
Radhakrishnan claiming to be authorised signatory for GE India Industrial
Private Limited.

The first
affidavit of K Radhakrishnan dated 17.12.2012 was a reply to CM 18642/ 2012
(it begins at page 3874 of the court record). This affidavit contained the
following statement at page 3878 of the court record:

“… the
Respondent Nos. 6 and 7 issued Board Resolutions authorizing Mr K R
Radhakrishnan to take all necessary steps to prosecute and/ or defend the said
two entities. It would further be necessary to mention that no Power of
Attorney as envisaged in each of the said Board Resolutions was issued as
the Board Resolution(s) issued clearly empowered and authorized Mr K R
Radhakrishnan to do all that was necessary to effectively prosecute and/ or
defend actions to be initiated by these entities and/ or initiated against
these entities.”

In this
affidavit, K Radhakrishnan therefore clearly admitted that no power of
attorney in his favour had been issued on behalf of GE India Industrial
Private Limited pursuant to the Board Resolution dated 7.5.2012. A bare
perusal of the Board Resolutions dated 7.5.2012 shows that it clearly
contemplated the execution of a power of attorney in favour of K
Radhakrishnan.

The Board
Resolution dated 7.5.2012 stated:

“RESOLVED
FURTHER THAT a Power of Attorney be executed for this purpose in favour of
K R Radhakrishnan and any one Director of the Company be and is hereby
authorised to sign the same for and on behalf of the company”.

The admitted
non-execution of a power of attorney in favour of K Radhakrishnan on behalf
of GE India Industrial Private Limited shows that K Radhakrishnan was never
appointed as the attorney of GE India Industrial Private Limited for the
purpose of this writ petition and he was not authorized to sign the
vakalatnamas and court pleadings on behalf of GE India Industrial Private
Limited.

Further the
board resolution dated 7.5.2012 which was produced as an authority document
by K Radhakrishnan did not even cover the Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012
filed in the Delhi High Court by the Appellant against General Electric
Company.

This Board
Resolution was limited to “Proceedings” which were defined as follows:

“initiate
proceedings before the Bar Council of Delhi (under the provisions of the
Bar Council of India Rules) or Bar Council of India or any Civil Courts,
Criminal Courts, High Courts, Supreme Court of India or before any other
Quasi-Judicial authority, Tribunal, Government Authority or Local
authority, against Ms. Seema Sapra, an advocate enrolled with the Bar
Council of Delhi (“Proceedings”)”

The
“Proceedings” covered by the Board Resolutions dated 7.5.2012 therefore did
not include the writ petition filed by the Appellant against GE India
Industrial Private Limited as the subject matter of the Board Resolution was
limited to proceedings that GE India Industrial Private Limited might
initiate against the Appellant.

The fraud that
was perpetrated on the Delhi High Court is extremely evident. In the first
instance, the source of K Radhakrishnan’s authority to represent GE India
Industrial Private Limited was described as a power of attorney in his favor.
A board resolution dated 7.5.2012 was then produced which however did not
cover the writ petition proceeding and which envisaged the execution of a
power of attorney which was admittedly never executed. Vakalatnama was not
filed. Affidavits were signed and filed through K Radhakrishnan even though
he was not duly constituted as the attorney for GE India Industrial Private
Limited.

Once the
Appellant pointed out these deficiencies on the court record of the writ
petition, a second attempt at fraudulently deceiving the court was attempted
by producing a board resolution dated 17.12.2012 which misrepresents itself
as a power of attorney.

The second
affidavit of K Radhakrishnan dated 17.12.2012 produced a copy of what was
described as another Board Resolution of GE India Industrial Private Limited
dated 17.12.2012. K Radhakrishnan now claimed to be the constituted attorney
for GE India Industrial Private Limited under this Board Resolution dated
17.12,2012.

This new alleged
board resolution dated 17.12.2012 is a strange document that masquerades as a
power of attorney by itself. It records that the consent of the Boards of GE
India Industrial Private Limited is accorded to authorise and appoint K
Radhakrishnan (the Company Secretary of GE India Industrial Private Limited)
as the attorney of the Company interalia to defend proceedings initiated
against the Company by Ms. Seema Sapra in the Delhi High Court. This board
resolution does not contain the usual provision that contemplates and
authorises the execution of a power of attorney instrument.

Instead in its
final paragraph, this board resolution claims to be the power of attorney
instrument itself and states: “RESOLVED FURTHER THAT this power of attorney
is governed by, and shall be construed in accordance with the laws of India
and shall remain in full force and effect until it is revoked by the company
in writing or until December 16, 2014 whichever occurs earlier”.

Did the board
resolution dated 17.12.2012 as filed constitute a power of attorney
appointing K R Radhakrishnan as the duly constituted attorney for GE India?

The Powers of
Attorney Act, 1882 defines a power of attorney as “any instrument
empowering a specified person to act for and in the name of the person
executing it.”

A Power of
Attorney therefore is a written legal instrument executed by the person
devolving the power of attorney on another “specified person” and thereby
empowering the specified person to act for and in the name of the person
executing the instrument.

Section 46 of
the Companies Act provides:

“Form of
contracts

(1) Contracts
on behalf of a company may be made as follows:—

(a) a contract
which, if made between private persons, would by law be required
to be in writing signed by the parties to be charged therewith, may
be made on behalf of the company in writing signed by any person acting
under its authority, express or implied, and may in the same manner be
varied or discharged;

(b) a contract
which, if made between private persons, would by law be valid although made
by parole only and not reduced into writing, may be made by parole on
behalf of the company by any person acting under its authority, express or
implied, and may in the same manner be varied or discharged.

(2) A contract
made according to this section shall bind the company.”

A power of
attorney on behalf of a company would therefore fall within Clause 1(a) of
Section 46 of the Companies Act and is required to be in writing and
executed/ signed on behalf of the company by a person acting under the
authority of the company.

Section 48 of
the Companies Act provides:

“Execution of
Deeds

(1) A company
may, by writing under its common seal, empower any person, either generally
or in respect of any specified matters, as its attorney, to execute deeds
on its behalf in any place either in or outside India.

(2) A deed
signed by such an attorney on behalf of the company and under his seal
where sealing is required, shall bind the company and have the same effect
as if it were under its common seal.”

Under Indian
law, a power of attorney executed on behalf of a company must be a written
instrument signed by an authorized signatory for and on behalf of the
company.

The alleged
board resolution dated 17.12.2012 purports to directly appoint K
Radhakrishnan as the attorney of GE India without the execution of a
written power of attorney instrument in favour of K Radhakrishnan signed by
an authorized signatory of GE India. This is not permissible under Indian
law. And the document described as a board resolution dated 17.12.2012 did
not therefore amount to a power of attorney and was invalid.

A board
resolution of a company is not a written instrument/ contract executed on
behalf of the company. Board resolutions by themselves cannot appoint
someone as an attorney of the company as this can only be done through a
written instrument duly executed on behalf of the company by an authorized
signatory signing such an instrument in the name of, for and on behalf of
the company. This was admittedly not done.

The copies of
the alleged board resolutions dated 7 May 2012 and 17 December 2012 placed on
record were not certified and authenticated as per usual practice and law.
The certified minutes containing these board resolutions were not produced.

A comparison of
the photocopies of the letterheads containing the two alleged board
resolutions for GE India Industrial Private Limited which were filed raises
the suspicion that these documents were not genuine. The alleged board
resolution dated 7.5.2012 does not bear the company seal. The GE logo
on the letterhead on which these board resolutions are printed is illegible.
The persons who have signed these documents dated 7.5.2012 and 17.12.2012 are
not identified. The letterhead on which the alleged board resolution for GE
India dated 17.12.2012 is printed has a blurred and obscured GE logo. Prima facie
it appears that the documents filed as board resolutions dated 7.5.2012 and
17.12.2012 are forged and unauthentic.

Both the board
resolutions dated 7.5.2012 and 17.12.2012 omitted to mention/ specify the
number or cause title or any identifying feature or the nature/ character/
subject matter of Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012.

The fact of this
fraud committed on the Delhi High Court is further confirmed by a strange
provision in the board resolutions dated 7.5.2012 and 17.12.2012. Both these
board resolutions provide that the powers conferred “shall not be prejudiced,
determined or otherwise affected by the fact of the Company acting either
directly or through another agent or attorney in respect of all or any of the
purposes herein contained”.

This clause was
obviously inserted to allow for “unauthorized” instructions to be sent to K
Radhakrishnan and Nanju Ganpathy which were not sent directly from GE India
but via other unidentified intermediaries/ agents/ attorneys. Multiple layers
of separation between the Company (and its legal officers) and court
proceedings in Writ Petition Civil No. 1280. 2012 were maintained.

Nanju Ganpahy
filed another vakalatnama dated 16.7.2013 also signed by K Radhakrishnan.
This vakalatnama also relied upon the alleged board resolution dated
17.12.2012 to establish K Radhakrishnan’s authority to act as attorney for GE
India.

The Appellant
filed CM 10493 of 2013 on 19.7.2013 placing the above facts and objections on
record and objecting to K Radhakrishnan being allowed to represent GE India
and objecting to Nanju Ganpathy appearing for GE India. This application was
unfortunately not taken up for hearing.

On 21.11.2014,
the Appellant moved another application being CM No. 18969 of 2014 again
seeking directions on these issues. This was also unfortunately adjourned by
the Court without being taken up despite the appellant’s requests that orders
were necessary on these issues.

Writ Petition
Civil No. 1280 of 2012 went before a new Division Bench of Judge Valmiki
Mehta and Judge P.S. Teji on 19.1.2015. It was adjourned to 20 and then 22
January 2015. On all these three days, the Bench held a formal hearing for
about an hour but the appellant was not permitted to argue the matter. The
Bench was insistent that the matter had become infructuous. The Bench did not
allow Ms. Seema Sapra to argue her case, and repeatedly kept interrupting
her. For most of these three hours spread over three days, Judge Valmiki
Mehta and Judge P. S Teji kept repeating that the matter was infructuous.
They repeatedly interrupted Ms. Seema Sapra to prevent her from arguing the
case. The matter was then adjourned to 3.2.2015.

On 19.1.2015,
when Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012 went before Judge Valmiki Mehta and
Judge P.S. Teji, all the alleged authority documents filed for the three
General Electric respondents had also expired by lapse of time on the
following dates.

Alleged
authority document

Date of expiry

Alleged Power
of Attorney executed by Alexander Dimitrief on 4 May 2012 purportedly on
behalf of General Electric Company

4 May 2013

Alleged Power
of Attorney executed by Bradford Berenson on 29 April 2013 purportedly on
behalf of General Electric Company

Despite the
Appellant’s objections, orders dated 19, 20 and 22 January 2015 passed by
Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P S Teji recorded the appearance of Manpreet
Lamba for GE India, General Electric Company and GE Global Sourcing India
Private Limited. The Appellant therefore declared her intent to impugn these
orders in a Special Leave Petition to the Supreme Court of India and applied
for certified copies of these orders. This intent was also communicated by
the Appellant to Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P S Teji on 19, 20, and 22
January 2015. The matter was adjourned to 3 February 2015.

The petitioner
learnt that on 28 January 2015, some document/s described in the court’s
electronic filing system as “vakalatnama” was filed under the name of Nanju
Ganpathy in this matter under diary no. 37442/2015. The Petitioner repeatedly
asked Mr Nanju Ganpathy to supply copies of these documents to the Petitioner
but he did not respond.

The Petitioner
therefore inspected the court record on 29 January 2015 and looked at the new
documents filed through Nanju Ganpathy on 28 January 2015 which had been
placed in the court file in folder B.

The Petitioner
then filed CM 1882 of 2015 addressing these new alleged authority documents
which were actually completely irrelevant documents being passed off as
authority documents. The petitioner also sought copies of these documents.
This application was listed before the High Court on 3.2.2015. The petitioner
also applied for certified copies of the new alleged authority documents filed
on 28.1.2015. On 2.2.2015 at around 4 pm, Nanju Ganpathy sent scanned
copies of these new authority documents filed on 28.1.2015 to the Petitioner.
These were incomplete as the scans excluded the edges of the documents.

Before
addressing these new alleged authority documents filed on 28.1.2015, the
nature of the hearing on 3.2.2015 is described below.

On 3.2.2015,
Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P.S. Teji held another hearing for about an
hour and a half and suddenly cut off the petitioner who had commenced
arguments on the issue of the corruption involving General Electric Company,
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Vinod Sharma and declared that they could not give
the petitioner further time. They declared that judgment was being reserved.
The Petitioner objected stating she had just started her arguments. The Bench
ignored her and walked out.

CM 1882 of 2015
and the earlier applications on the issue of appearance by the General
Electric respondents were not taken up for hearing on 3.2.2015 or decided.

What were the
new documents filed on 28.1.2015?

No new
“vakalatnama” was filed. Three documents were filed which were described in
the table of contents as:

Copy of Power
of Attorney dated December 8, 2014 valid till September 30, 2015 filed on
behalf of Respondent No. 6

The first
document is what purports to be a Power of Attorney in favor of K
Radhakrishnan allegedly executed by Tejal Patil on behalf of GE India
Industrial Private Limited, who is described therein as a Director. This
alleged POA is dated 8/12/2014 and was valid until 30/9/2015. This alleged
POA refers to a Board Resolution dated 10/9/14 and claims to have been
executed pursuant to this Board Resolution dated 10/9/14. This document does
not mention WP Civil 1280/2012, or OMP 647/2012, or the alleged arbitration
before Mr Deepak Verma, or the alleged complaint which was already made to
the Bar Council of Delhi against Ms Seema Sapra. This alleged PoA has not
been executed on non-judicial stamp paper and is also neither notarized nor
attested. No company stamp is affixed. It bears signatures of two witnesses
named as Ira Shukla and Shweta Malhotra without any information about who
these witnesses are. Prima facie this POA is invalid and fraudulent.

The opening
paragraph of this alleged Power of Attorney reads:

“KNOW ALL MEN
BY THIS PRESENT THAT GE India Industrial Private Limited (hereinafter
called “Company”) having registered office at 401, 402, 4th Floor, Aggarwal
Millennium Tower, E-1,2,3 Netaji Subhash Place, Wazirpur, New Delhi 110 034
acting through Ms. Tejal Patil, Director of the Company, duly authorised by
Board of Directors through resolution passed on 10th September, 2014 does
hereby constitute and appoint K R Radhakrishnan, Company Secretary to
initiate proceedings before the Bar Council of Delhi (under the provisions
of the Bar Council of India Rules) or Bar Council of India or any Civil
Courts, Criminal Courts, High Courts, Supreme Court of India or before any
other Quasi-Judicial authority, Tribunal, Government Authority or Local
authority, against Ms. Seema Sapra, an advocate enrolled with the Bar
Council of Delhi (“Proceedings”) and to prosecute, defend and for that
purpose to appear & represent the Company and to perform and execute,
with respect to the Proceedings, from time to time, all or any of the
following acts, deeds and things, that is to say:- “

Note that this
alleged Power of Attorney dated 8.12.2014 did in any case not cover the
proceedings in Writ Petition Civil No.1280/2012 instituted against GE India
by Ms. Seema Sapra as it was limited to proceedings that GE India might
institute against Ms. Seema Sapra.

The second
document filed is what is described as a board resolution of GE India
Industrial Private Limited dated 10/9/14 which merely refers to another
earlier alleged board resolution dated 27/9/12 and purports to extend the
validity of the latter resolution to 30/9/15. This is reproduced below.

Certified true
copy of the resolution passed by the Board of Directors of the Company in
its meeting held on September 10, 2014

Power of
Attorney in favour of K R Radhakrishnan

“RESOLVED THAT
in partial modification of the resolution passed by the Board of Directors
on 27th September 2012, the authority granted in favour of K R
Radhakrishnan, be and is hereby extended to 30th September,
2015.”

RESOLVED
FURTHER THAT all the terms and conditions mentioned in all earlier
resolutions remain unchanged.”

RESOLVED
FURTHER THAT a fresh power of attorney be executed for this purpose in
favour of K Radhakrishnan and any one Director of the Company be and is
hereby authorised to sign the same for and on behalf of the Company.”

Certified to
be true

For GE India
Industrial Pvt. Ltd.

K R
Radhakrishnan

Company
Secretary

Membership No.
F3276

R/o A-202,
Emerald Court

Essel Towers

Gurgaon

The third document
filed is what is also described as a board resolution of GE India Industrial
Private Limited dated 26/9/13 which merely refers to an earlier board
resolution dated 27/9/12 and purports to extend the validity of the latter
resolution to 30/9/14. This is reproduced below.

Certified true
copy of the Resolution passed by the Board of Directors of the Company in
its meeting held on September 26, 2013

Power of
Attorney in favour of K R Radhakrishnan

“RESOLVED THAT
in partial modification of the resolution passed by the Board of Directors
on 27th September 2012, the authority granted in
favour of K R Radhakrishnan, be and is hereby extended to 30th September,
2014.”

RESOLVED
FURTHER THAT all the terms and conditions mentioned in all earlier
resolution(s) remain unchanged.”

RESOLVED
FURTHER THAT a fresh power of attorney be executed for this purpose in
favour of K R Radhakrishnan and any one Director of the Company be and is
hereby authorised to sign the same for and on behalf of the Company.”

Certified to be
true

For GE India
Industrial Pvt. Ltd.

K R
Radhakrishnan

Company
Secretary

Membership No.
F3276

R/o A-202,
Emerald Court

Essel Towers,
Gurgaon

Haryana-122002

So the new
documents filed on 28.1.2015 were the following:

i. An
alleged Power of Attorney executed by Tejal Patil in favour of K
Radhakrishnan which did not apply to Writ Petition Civil. No. 1280/2012.

ii. An
alleged Board resolution dated 26.9.2013 which merely extends an earlier
board resolution dated 27.8.012 which was not produced.

iii. An
alleged Board resolution dated 10.9.2014 which merely extends an earlier
board resolution dated 27.8.012 which was not produced.

The new
documents filed on 28.1.2015 refer to the following documents which were not
produced:

i. A
board resolution dated 10.9.2014 referred to in the Power of Attorney dated
8.12.2014 but which board resolution was not produced.

The two alleged
board resolutions dared 10.9.14 and 26.9.2013 merely refer to an earlier
alleged resolution dated 27.9.12 and purport to extend the latter’s validity,
which itself has not been produced and whose contents are therefore unknown.
So we do not know for what purpose if any, K Radhakrishnan appointed was as
attorney of GE India by the alleged board resolution dated
27.9.2012. The failure to produce this alleged board resolution dated
27/9/12 can only mean that no such resolution exists or if it does exist, it
is irrelevant.

The fraud played
on the Delhi High Court by the impersonator K Radhakrishnan falsely claiming
to be the authorised signatory of GE India stands further exposed and
established even by the last desperate attempt to file further fraudulent and
irrelevant alleged authority documents on record behind the back of the
petitioner on 28.1.2015.

A summary of the
various authority documents which Advocate Nanju Ganpathy produced for K
Radhakrishnan establishes the fraud beyond doubt.

Writ Petition
Civil 1280/2012 went to new Division Bench of Judge Valmiki Mehta &
Judge P S Teji who wrongly recorded appearance of counsel for General
Electric despite objection by petitioner.

Petitioner
indicated her intention to challenge these orders wrongly recording
appearance of counsel for General Electric.

28.1.2015

Documents
described in the court’s electronic filing system as “vakalatnama” were
filed under the name of Nanju Ganpathy under diary no. 37442/2015 without
providing copies to the petitioner.

There was no
vakaltnama.

These three
documents were

A power of
attorney dt 8.12.2014 executed by Tejal Patil in favour of K Radhakrishnan
which did not cover Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012. This power of
attorney referred to a board resolution dt 10.9.2014 which was not
produced.

A board
resolution dt 10.12.2014 which was irrelevant and did not establish
authority of K Radhakrishnan for the writ petition.

A board
resolution dt. 26.9.2013 which was irrelevant and did not establish
authority of K Radhakrishnan for the writ petition.

Reference was
made in these documents to another board resolution dt 27.9.2012 which was
not produced and appears to be irrelevant.

It is basic and
settled law that no person can claim to represent a legal entity or a company
in court proceedings without being duly authorised in accordance with law and
without producing such duly executed authority documents. It is also basic
and settled law that no lawyer can represent a party in court proceedings
without placing on the record a vakalatnama in his favour duly executed by
such party or by its duly authorised signatory.

No Court has the
power or discretion to allow a company to be represented in court proceedings
by an individual who has failed to produce valid and sufficient authority
documents, has failed to establish his authority to represent the company,
and who has produced invalid, false, forged and fabricated authority
documents. The Court also has no power or discretion to permit a lawyer to
represent a party in the absence of a duly executed and valid vakalatnama.

A judgment was
issued in Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 by the Bench of Judge Valmiki and
Judge P.S. Teji on 3.3.2015 wrongfully dismissing the petition.

This judgment
contained the following statement in paragraph 19

“In addition
to the above applications there are various other applications filed by the
petitioner effectively alleging that the lawyers of respondents no.1,6 and
7 and the attorney empowered by the Board’s resolutions of respondent nos.
1,6 and 7 have no right to represent these respondents though there have
been filed on record the vakalatnamas, the power of attorneys by GE
companies in favour of their officers, notifications and copies of the
resolutions of the GE companies authorizing their officers to conduct the
present and other litigations initiated by the present petitioner. These
applications are as under:-“

This then is how
the Division Bench of Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P.S. Teji have dealt with
the applications pointing out that the authority documents filed for the
General Electric respondents were invalid. Instead of hearing and deciding
these applications on merits, this Bench prevented the petitioner from
arguing, reserved judgment without a hearing, did not accord any hearing on
the applications, and in its judgment failed to deal with the submissions of
the petitioner, and with the material and evidence on record. It further
included the statement in paragraph 19 which conveys the incorrect impression
as if this issue was examined by the court. Note that this paragraph in the judgment
does not examine whether these authority documents filed were invalid,
defective, fraudulent or irrelevant as the petitioner had contended and as
elaborate hereinabove, instead the paragraph merely records that these were
filed. Without even hearing the petitioner and without referring to her
submissions, paragraph 19 conveys the impression that K Radhakrishnan was
duly authorised to represent the three General Electric respondents and that
Nanju Ganpathy was authorized to appear for the General Electric respondents.

22. There were
two applications on the court record of Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 that comprehensively
brought out the material and evidence before the Delhi High Court to establish
that the petitioner’s whistleblower complaints were genuine. These were CM 19501/2012
and CM 7197/2013. Notice in CM 19501/2012 was issued on 21 December 2012. True
copies of CM 19501/2012 and CM 7197/2013 are being filed in a separate
volume.

23. Just by way
of example, the evidence that was available before the Delhi High Court against
General Electric and the Ministry of Railways in respect of two of the several
whistleblower complaints of the appellant is reproduced hereinbelow for the
benefit of this Hon’ble Court.

24. Corruption
by PwC and General Electric Company in Marhowra diesel locomotive factory
Project. How the Indian Railway Ministry fabricated false documents and
evidence to cover up corruption by General Electric Company.

Read below on
how the Railway Ministry fabricated false documents and evidence to cover up
corruption by General Electric Company. This deals with the issue of
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Vinod Sharma.

General Electric
engaged in a proscribed corrupt and undesirable practice by using the
advisory and lobbying services of one Vinod Sharma for its bid for the 2010
Marhowra and Madhepura tenders and in doing so violated Clause 2.2.1 (d),
Clause 4.1.3 a) and Clause 4.1.3 d) of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ and was accordingly
liable to be disqualified and blacklisted under Clause 4.1.2. This also
amounted to a violation of the conflict of interest clause which was
expressly proscribed by the RFQ.

Vinod Sharma is
a retired Indian Railways official who after retirement worked with
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). PwC was appointed as consultant by the Railway
Ministry in 2008 to prepare the bid documents for the Marhowra Project and to
assist in bid evaluation and Vinod Sharma was part of the PwC team.

Four elements
are required to establish as to whether General Electric did commit this
corrupt practice and whether it was liable to be disqualified and
blacklisted.

i. Did
Vinod Sharma work for GE in 2010 on the bid for the Marhowra Project?

ii. Did
Vinod Sharma earlier act as an advisor to the Railway Ministry for the same
Project?

iii. Did
these facts violate clauses of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ which defined corrupt
and undesirable practices and conflict of interest?

iv. What
were the consequences prescribed by the RFQ for such violation?

i.
Material and evidence to establish that Vinod Sharma worked for GE in 2010 on
the bid for the Marhowra Project.

· The
Appellant in her writ petition described her meetings with Vinod Sharma in
the GE office in May, June and July 2010 where Vinod Sharma’s gave his advice
on the draft bid documents that the GE team had prepared for the Madhepura
and Marhowra tenders and met Railway officials along with the GE team on several
occasions.

· The
appellant also produced on record two internal GE emails referring to Vinod
Sharma and his visits to the GE office.

General
Electric internal emails dated July 5, 2010 sent in connection with Mr.
Vinod Sharma’s visit to the GE office. The first email was sent by Mr.
Pratyush Kumar at 8:17 am on July 5, 2010 with the subject “RFQ”. The email
was sent to Mr. Ashish Malhotra, Mr. Gaurav Negi, Mr. Ashfaq Nainar, Ms.
Praveena Yagnambhat, Mr. Ramesh Mathur and to the Appellant. It stated:

“Mr Sharma
will be coming to AIFACS around 11 am to go through D-Loco RFQ submittal.”

Mr. Ramesh
Mathur replied to this email at 8.20 a.m. and stated:

“We were
planning for tomorrow. If he is coming today we will share
work-in-progress. Thanks. Ramesh”

“ … the
Answering Respondents state that GE India did in fact enter into a written
agreement to govern its relationship with Mr Sharma’s company, Essvee
Consultants, effective August 11, 2009.”

Interestingly
this affidavit disclosed that GE India had entered into a written contract
with Vinod Sharma, through what the affidavit described as his “company”
“Essvee Consultants” effective from 11 Aug 2009. However, a search of
corporate records at the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has revealed that
there exists no company registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs
with the name “Essvee Consultants”. There is no incorporated company in
existence in India whose name begins with “Essvee Consultants”.

ii. Material and
Evidence to establish that Vinod Sharma had earlier in 2008 and 2009 advised
the Railway Ministry on the Marhowra Project and tender

Legally vetted
copy of final Land Lease agreement incorporating views of AM/Adviser’s
Committee has been submitted by the Consultant (PWC) and put up to
Board(ME) for approval.

Legally vetted
copy of Procurement Contract has been received from the Consultant. Other
draft agreements (Shareholders’ agreement and Maintenance Contract) are
under legal vetting with the Consultlant.

Procurement Specialist
for validating procurement contract hired by the Consultlant, has started
work. Work likely to be completed in a week’s time.

After
validation of Procurement Contract and legal vetting of draft agreements,
final bid document (RFP) will be put up for approval by Board(MM, FC &
CRB) and MR. Likely date of submission is 30-04-2008.

A fresh RFQ
based on approval by Planning Commission will be issued shortly.

Further bid
process will depnd on the reply to the reference made to the Ministry of
Finance.

Bid process is
likely to be completed by August, 2008.

The project is
expected to be completed in about 2 to 2½ years after CCEA’s approval is
obtained for going ahead with bidding process for Joint – Venture.”

· An
ADB document from November 2008 numbered T A 4998 (IND): Preparing the
Railway Sector Investment Program Final Report – Efficiency Improvement. This
document includes Mr. Vinod Sharma’s name as a representative of
PricewaterhouseCoopers (P) Ltd. This document appears to be a consultancy
report prepared by PwC for the Ministry of Railways under ADB funding and
includes advice on the Electric and Diesel Locomotive Tenders.” Copies of
relevant extracts from this were annexed as Annexure P-3 to the Appellant’s
rejoinder affidavit dated 9/7/2012 filed in WP Civil 1280/ 2012. This
document establishes that in 2008, Mr Vinod Sharma was working for
PricewaterhouseCoopers which was advising the Ministry of Railways on the
bids for the diesel locomotive factory.

· A
news report dated 3 October 2008 published by Live Mint which stated “PwC is
advising the railways on the diesel locomotive bids.”

“Govt shortlists
five MNCs for $8 bn Indian Railways orders

The firms will
compete for deals to build and supply 660 electric locomotives and 1,000
diesel engines”

· An
article titled ‘Indian Railways: Steamrolling towards new horizons’ by Vineet
Unnikrishnan published in the India Law Journal in the fourth quarter of 2008
described the engagement of PwC by the Indian Railways in these terms:

“PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC), a renowned professional consultancy company and Singhania &
Partners, a distinguished legal firm are handling the financial and legal
nitty-gritty’s respectively. These firms are currently in the course of
preparing the details of the structure for some of the projects which
includes the procedure of the entire bidding process, ownership shares,
management, etc which will lay a foundation for future projects of a
similar nature. The primary focus of the two firms is on the work related
to the establishment of new mainline factories (NMF) and identifying and
acknowledging the legal issues that can impact the said ventures, reviewing
and preparing the requisite project and transaction documentation,
conducting legal vetting, providing valuable advice legal questions in the
management of the bidding process collection of significant legal data
needed for the successful development of the factories and creation of
inventive strategies to manage the bids and pick competent developers for
the new factories.” See
http://www.indialawjournal.com/volume1/issue_4/article_by_vineet.html

· In
its counter affidavit dated 2 July 2012 the Railway Ministry first attempted
to mislead the Court by stating that it “has never engaged Shri Vinod Sharma
for any work in connection with the said tenders” referring to the 2010
tenders and thereby incorrectly implying that the prohibition on conflict of
interest was in respect of the same tender and not the same Project. This was
countered by the appellant in her response where it was pointed out that both
Clause 2.2.1 (d) and Clause 4.1.3 (a) of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ used the word
Project.

· Attempt
by the Railway Ministry to mislead the Court by perjury and fabrication of
false evidence in its affidavit dated 14 January 2013 filed in reply to CM
19501/ 2012.

· In
its affidavit dated 14 January 2013, the Ministry of Railways actually
produced two patently fabricated letters which were used to make a false
statement in the affidavit that Vinod Sharma did not advise the Ministry on
the Marhowra Rail Project. Both these letters are reproduced and analysed
below. This conduct by the Railway Ministry where it failed to honestly
answer the question as to whether or not Vinod Sharma ever advised the
Ministry on the Marhowra Project, and where instead the attempt was to lie based
upon fabricated documents is by itself evidence and material sufficient to
lead to the inference that the Railway Ministry is trying to hide the true
facts. These documents establish that the Railway Ministry has tried to
protect GE and to cover up its corrupt practice by deliberately misleading
the Court on the point of Vinod Sharma. This conduct by the Railway Ministry
it is submitted constitutes perjury and contempt of court and involves a
criminal conspiracy to deceive the court and to fabricate false evidence.

A Writ
Petition No. 1280/2012 has been filed in Delhi High Court against M/s
General Electric Company and others in which Ministry of Railways is also
one of the Respondents. In the Writ Petition, the petitioner has raised
certain issues related to M/s PricewaterhouseCoopers, who had been engaged
by M/s RITES as consultant for setting up of Diesel Locomotive Factory,
Marhowra. The contents of Writ Petition are posted on website of Delhi High
Court.

You may kindly
get the same examined and submit your comments by 31.12.12 positively as
the same are to be discussed on 1,1.2013 with Counsel of Central Government
for finalizing the Counter Affidavit. Concerned officers may discuss and
seek any clarification on the matter with undersigned on 28.12.12.

In reference
to the above letter from Railway Board in regard to the writ petition no.
1280/2012 filed in Delhi High Court, the issues related to M/s PricewaterhouseCoopers
raised by the petitioner have been examined and the comments of RITES are
as under:-

i)Railway
Board, vide letter no. 2006/Infra./PPP/Consultancy dt. 11.10.2006 (copy
placed at Annexure-1) communicated to RITES that Railway Board has approved
appointment of RITES for providing consultancy services to the Ministry of
Railways to engage Consultancy firm for advisory on setting up new
manufacturing units through International Competitive Bidding under Single
Stage Bidding Process based on the RFP framed by PPP cell.

ii)
Accordingly, RITES went through with the process of engaging a consultancy
form on behalf of the Ministry of Railways and issued Letter of Award dt.
2.3.2007 to M/s PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. (PwC) – copy placed at
Annexure-2 and signed an agreement dated 6.3.2007 as the Employer’s
Representative on behalf of the Ministry of Railways (Employer) and M/s
PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. (Consultant) – copy placed at Annexure-3.

iii)As regards
the issue of Mr. Vinod Sharma raised by the petitioner, it is brought out
that the relevant records have been checked and as per the Technical
Proposal -Part II of M/s PwC of December, 2006, the Team Composition of PwC
for the consultancy assignment mentioned in Para I above, was as under:-

S.No.

Name

Position

Technical/
Managerial Staff

1.

Amrit
Pandurangi

Project
Manager (Senior PPP Specialist)

2.

Latha
Ramanathan

Financial
Analyst

3.

Vishwas
Udgirkar

Procurement
Specialist

4.

Dipak Rao

Legal
Specialist

5.

Rahul Garg

Tax
Specialist

6.

Sarabjit
Arjan Singh

Technology
Expert (Passenger Coach)

7.

Harry
Aghjayan

Technology
Expert (Wheel)

8.

Claude
Messier

Technology
Expert (Diesel Locomotive)

9.

Raymond
Booth

Technology
Expert (Electric Locomotive)

Support
Staff

10.

Nripesh
Kumar

PPP
Specialist / Project Management

11.

Kushal Singh

Bid Process
Management Specialist

12.

Manav Bansal

Financial
Analyst

13.

Sarika Jain

Financial
Analyst

14.

Subrajit
Ghadel

Bid Process
Management Specialist

15.

Kishore
Desai

Research Expert

16.

Ashutosh
Bhandari

Research
Expert

Further, at no
stage during the currency of the assignment, M/s PwC informed
RITES/Ministry of Railways about any change in the team composition.

Thus from the
information furnished by PwC, it is seen that Mr. Vinod Sharma was not a
part of the PwC team that worked on the consultancy assignment.

The above is
for your information please.

Thanking you

Yours
faithfully,

(Anil Vij)

GGM/RW&IE

Encl. :- As
Above.

· The
second letter from RITES to the Railway Board dated 7.1.2013 refers to a
consultancy contract with PwC dated 6.3.2007 and then uses the list of the
proposed team composition in the Technical Proposal -Part II of M/s PwC of
December, 2006 to state that Vinod Sharma was not a part of the team that
worked on that consultancy assignment.

· As
a matter of fact, there were two separate consultancy contracts entered into
between the Railway Ministry/RITES and PwC.

· The
first was the contract dated 6.3.2007 which was a consultancy to advise on
the process the Railway Ministry should prefer for setting up its proposed
locomotive, coach and wheel manufacturing factories.

A news report
dated February 18, 2007 available on the internet at
http://www.steelguru.com/indian_news/Indian_Railway_selects_PWC_as_advisor_for_rolling_stock_venture/18380.html
states: “Business Line reported that Indian Railways has selected Price
Waterhouse Coopers to advise it on the process it should prefer for setting
up its proposed locomotive, coach and wheel manufacturing factories. The
report cites an Indian railway official as saying that "PWC is required
to submit an inception report within a fortnight. And the final advisory
report has to be submitted within another two and a half months.” On behalf
of the Railway Ministry, RITES had invited competitive bids from consulting
firms to provide advisory services on development strategy and bid process
management for selection of developers for new factories.”

This contract
with PwC dated 6.3.2007 was only for 3 months and this assignment was
completed by June 2007. This contract was also not specific exclusively to
the Marhowra Project but was for provision of advisory services on
development strategy and bid process management for selection of developers
for the new proposed locomotive, coach and wheel manufacturing factories.

· In
2008, the Railway Ministry either directly or through RITES entered into
another consultancy contract with PwC which is referred to in the internal
Ministry of Railways 2008 document downloaded by the Petitioner on June 25,
2012 from the Ministry of Railways website at
http://indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/uploads/directorate/O&M/Annexture_1_4.pdf
and titled “Annexture_1_4.pdf” which has been reproduced above. This is also
the contract mentioned in the news report dated 3 October 2008 published by
Live Mint which stated “PwC is advising the railways on the diesel locomotive
bids.” This is also the contract mentioned in the article published in the
fourth quarter of 2008 in the India Law Journal, the relevant part reproduced
hereinabove. It is under this 2008 contract with the Railway Ministry that
PwC provided advisory services on the bid documents and bid evaluation for
the 2008-2009 Marhowra Project and tender. Vinod Sharma was part of the PwC
team advising the Railway Ministry on the Marhowra Project and tender under
this 2008 contract with PwC.

· So
when called upon by the Delhi High Court to answer as to whether Vinod Sharma
had advised the Ministry of Railways as part of the PwC team for preparation
of bid documents and for bid evaluation for the Marhowra Project and
tender in 2008, officials of the Railway Ministry and RITES were made to
write fabricated letters dated 27.12.2012 and 7.1.2013 which referred not to
the relevant 2008 contract with PwC but to an entirely different, earlier and
irrelevant contract dated 6.3.2007 and this letter was then used to create
false evidence by way of the RITES reply dated 7.1.2013 which was in turn
used by the Railway Ministry to lie on affidavit that Vinod Sharma had not
advised the Railway Ministry on the Marhowra Project.

· This
lie also stands exposed because the PwC contract dated 6.3.2007 mentioned in
the RITES letter dated 7.1.2013 involved advisory on setting up new
manufacturing units through International Competitive Bidding under Single
Stage Bidding Process based on the RFP framed by PPP cell. The Bid Process
that was finally adopted by the Railway Ministry for both the Marhowra and
the Madhepura Projects in 2008 involved a two stage bidding process with
separate RFQ and RFP stages.

· That
there was a deliberate conspiracy to mislead the Court by the Railway
Ministry is also evident from the following:

o The
letter to RITES from G.K. Gupta, Executive Director Mechanical Engg.
(Project), Railway Board dated 27.12.2012 did not provide a copy of the writ
petition to RITES. Instead the letter resorts to the falsehood that a copy of
the writ petition was available on the website of the Delhi High Court. This
letter does not state the conflict of interest complaint against GE, Vinod
Sharma and PwC. In fact, it does not even mention Vinod Sharma. This letter
which asks RITES for comments on a complaint of corruption and conflict of
interest in a pending writ petition for the express purpose of drafting a
court affidavit does not even disclose to RITES what the complaint was, and
what the issue and facts in contention were.

o The
response from Anil Vij, GGM/RW&IE, RITES to Executive Director Mech.
Engg. (Proj.), Railway Board dated 7.1.2013 refers to as explained above a
contract signed with PwC dated 6.3.2007 and states that copies of the letter
of award dated 2.3. 2007 and contract dated 6.3.2007 are attached to the
letter, but these attachments were not included in the railway affidavit
which produced this letter before the Delhi High Court. This for the obvious
reason that the persons who drafted, signed and affirmed the affidavit were
aware that this contract dated 6.3.2007 was not the relevant contract and the
relevant contract was from 2008. These persons were aware that they were
drafting and/or signing a false and misleading statement on oath in an
affidavit with intent to mislead the court and to cover up corruption by
General Electric Company.

o While
the letter dt 27.12.2012 from the Railway Ministry is addressed to the
Chairman-cum-Managing Director of RITES, the reply dated 7.12013 from RITES
has not been issued by the Chairman-cum-Managing Director, but under the name
of one Mr Anil Vij with the words GGM/ RW&IE printed underneath. The
letter does not bear a full signature and instead has merely been initialled
and even these initials are illegible.

· The
affidavit dated January 14, 2013 filed for the Railway Ministry states at
page 12 on the issue of Mr Vinod Sharma that: “A bare perusal of the
communication dated 07.01.2013 as conveyed by M/s. RITES evidently discloses
that Mr. Vinod Sharma was not part of the team nominated by PWC for working
on the advisory assignment for the setting up of the DLF, Marhowra”.

· It
is submitted that this statement in the Railway Affidavit dated 14.1.2013 is
false and that the officers who have signed this affidavit authors of the
Railway affidavit have attempted to protect themselves by using the words
“evidently discloses”. The phrase “evidently discloses” is commonly used to
distance oneself from a statement of fact and to deny any personal
responsibility for the fact being asserted.

· The
Affidavit dated 14.1.2013 filed for the Railway Ministry is signed and
affirmed by two officers from the Railway Ministry, one of whom is Gopal
Krishan Gupta, Executive Director, Mechanical Engineering (Project) Railway
Board, the same person who wrote to RITES on 27.12.2012. The other officer is
Nihar Ranjan Dash, Executive Director, Electrical Engineering (Development)
Railway Board. Both G K Gupta and N R Dash therefore in their affidavit dated
January 14, 2013 have denied personal responsibility and ownership of the
statement that “A bare perusal of the communication dated 07.01.2013 as
conveyed by M/s. RITES evidently discloses that Mr. Vinod Sharma was not part
of the team nominated by PWC for working on the advisory assignment for the
setting up of the DLF, Marhowra”.

· For
the reasons set out hereinabove, the statements made on behalf of the Railway
Ministry in its affidavit dated January 14, 2013 in paragraphs 17, 18, 20,
and 32 on the issue of Mr Vinod Sharma are false and incorrect. These
statements and the misleading record produced and sought to be created by the
Railway Ministry are clearly the result of a planned conspiracy under advice
of lawyers, by Railway Ministry officials to deceive and mislead the court
with intent to cover up the corrupt nature of the dealings between Vinod
Sharma and General Electric in 2009 and 2010. These statements amount to
perjury and the fabrication of documents and evidence attracts the relevant
sections of the Indian Penal Code.

·

Even the
affidavit-in-reply verified on 23 March 2013 and filed on behalf of the
General Electric respondents contains the following statement:

“The Answering
Respondents are unaware of the percentage of text from the 2010 diesel tender
documents that is similar to the earlier project documents. Further, the
Answering Respondents are unaware of what role, if any, Mr. Sharma or PwC
served in reviewing documents associated with the 2008 diesel locomotive
tender”.

The fact that
PwC was advising the Railway Ministry on the 2008 Marhowra tender was public
knowledge and widely published. GE executives would have attended formal
pre-bid meetings with Railway officials and PwC representatives in 2008. So
this statement in this affidavit-in-reply verified on 23 March 2013 and filed
on behalf of the General Electric respondents is also false.

· As
stated above, a “Sur-Rejoinder Affidavit” dated 23 March 2013 filed for the
GE Respondents (Nos. 1, 6 and 7) in Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 states
that GE India entered into a written agreement with Vinod Sharma’s company,
Essvee Consultants, effective August 11, 2009.

There are no
records for such company with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

A search on the
internet for Essvee Consultants shows that there is a website with the domain
name http://www.essveeconsultants.com/. The “company profile” on this website
reads:

“Established
in 2009, *Essvee Consultants* is a trusted placement agency providing total
recuritment solutions for diverse industries having its offices in Ajmer
(Rajasthan) and Faridabad (Haryana). We are engaged in providing manpower
solutions in India as well as abroad. The company has been established with
the sole objective of dedicatedly serving the Human Resource Sector with
quality service. The company is providing consultation and value added HR
services to Corporate and other small Business Houses. Our prime focus is
on offering HR Services that exactly match the requirements of our esteemed
clients”.

The “management
team” and “contact” pages on this website list the following three names:
Sandeep Dutt Sharma, Rajesh Sharma and Rahul Sharma. All three names share
the surname “Sharma” with Mr Vinod Sharma. It is pointed out that this Essvee
Consultants claims to have been established in 2009.

· General
Electric therefore engaged Vinod Sharma in 2009 and 2010 for advice on its
bids for the Marhowra and Madhepura Projects. Vinod Sharma had earlier in
2008-2009 been part of the PwC team that advised and consulted with the
Railway Ministry on the Marhowra Project and the 2008-2009 Marhowra tender.
This PwC team advised on bid strategy, it drafted bid documents, and it
evaluated the 2008-2009 Marhowra tender bids including the bid of General
Electric.

As a result
General Electric was liable to be not only disqualified under the 2010
Marhowra RFQ but also liable to be blacklisted from all Railway Ministry
Projects for a period of two years under Clause 4.1.1 and Clause 4.1.2 of the
2010 Marhowra RFQ respectively.

· The
relevant clauses of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ

Clause 2.2.1
(d)

"An
Applicant shall be liable for disqualification if any legal, financial or
technical adviser of the Authority in relation to the Project is engaged by
the Applicant during the Bidding Process or after the issue of the LOA or
after the execution of the Agreement, as the case may be, till
commissioning of the factory as per provisions to be specified in the RFP,
in any manner for matters related to or incidental to the Project.”

Clause 4.1.3
(a)

""corrupt
practice" means (i) the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting,
directly or indirectly, of anything of value to influence the actions of
any person connected with the Bidding Process (for avoidance of doubt,
offering of employment to or employing or engaging in any manner
whatsoever, directly or indirectly, any official of the Authority who is or
has been associated in any manner, directly or indirectly with the Bidding
Process or the LoA or has dealt with matters concerning the Agreement or arising
therefrom, before or after the execution thereof, at any time prior to the
expiry of one year from the date such official resigns or retires from or
otherwise ceases to be in the service of the Authority, shall be deemed to
constitute influencing the actions of a person connected with the Bidding
Process) or (ii) engaging in any manner whatsoever, whether during the
Bidding Process or after the issue of the LOA or after the execution of the
Agreement, as the case may be, till commissioning of the factory as per
provisions to be specified in the RFP, any person in respect of any matter
relating to the Project or the LOA or the Agreement, who at any time has
been or is a legal, financial or technical adviser of the
Authority in relation to any matter concerning the Project".

Clause 4.1.1

“The
Applicants and their respective officers, employees, agents and advisers
shall observe the highest standard of ethics during the Bidding Process.
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein, the Authority
shall reject an Application without being liable in any manner whatsoever
to the Applicant if it determines that the Applicant has, directly or
indirectly or through an agent, engaged in corrupt practice, fraudulent
practice, coercive practice, undesirable practice or restrictive practice
in the Bidding Process.”

Clause 4.1.2

“Without
prejudice to the rights of the Authority under Clause 4.1.1 hereinabove, if
an Applicant is found by the Authority to have directly or indirectly or
through an agent, engaged or indulged in any corrupt practice, fraudulent
practice, coercive practice, undesirable practice or restrictive practice
during the Bidding Process, such Applicant shall not be eligible to
participate in any tender or RFQ issued by the Authority during a period of
2 (two) years from the date such Applicant is found by the Authority to
have directly or indirectly or through an agent, engaged or indulged in any
corrupt practice, fraudulent practice, coercive practice, undesirable
practice or restrictive practice, as the case may be.”

Clause 4.1.3
d)

“undesirable
practice” means (i) establishing contact with any person connected with or
employed or engaged by the Authority with the objective of canvassing,
lobbying or in any manner influencing or attempting to influence the
Bidding Process; or (ii) having a Conflict of Interest”.

Clause 1.2.1”.
“The term “Project” is defined by this RFQ in Clause 1.2.1 as follows:

“The Project
for which the Applications are being invited pursuant to this RFQ Document
shall comprise of the following:

i. setting up
a new Mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives factory at Marhowra, Bihar
(hereafter referred as the “Site”); and

ii. supplying
Mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives to the Authority; and

iii. providing
maintenance support for the Mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives procured
by the Authority from the new factory.”

25. General
Electric Company forged/doctored a Kazakhstan Rail customer certificate for
India Marhowra rail tender in 2010. How the Railway Ministry lied on affidavit
& fabricated CVC docs to cover-up forgery by General Electric in 2010
Marhowra diesel loco tender.

Read below for
how the Railway Ministry has covered up the complaint that a forged/ tampered
Kazakhstan Railway customer certificate was submitted by General Electric
with its 2010 RFQ Marhowra DLF on 12 July 2010.

Since all
documents that can establish this complaint are either in the possession of
the Railway Ministry or of General Electric, it is obvious that the appellant
cannot produce direct documentary evidence of this forgery. What the
appellant can produce is her own insider eye-witness account of what she saw,
read and heard when she was working with General Electric in 2010 when this
document was forged.

Second the
appellant can produce documentary evidence of correspondence exchanged with
General Electric lawyers in 2010 and 2011 which establishes that this
complaint was not properly and satisfactorily investigated by GE and that GE
lawyers attempted to cover up this forgery.

The third and
most important type of material and evidence that prima facie establishes the
need for investigation of this complaint is documentary evidence that
establishes the attempt by the Government of India including both the Railway
Ministry and the Central Vigilance Commission to close this complaint without
investigation as part of the cover-up of all complaints against GE. This
evidence has emerged on the record of Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 in
the affidavits and documents filed by the CVC and the Railway Ministry.

It is submitted
that evidence of a cover-up by the Government leads to the inference that
there is something to hide and the Government did not want to investigate
this complaint in accordance with law because the documentary evidence in its
possession is harmful to GE.

The Appellant
narrated her eye-witness account in the rejoinder affidavits filed by her on
July 9, 2012 and on July 23, 2012 and in particular on the correspondence
between the her and General Electric exchanged during and after General
Electric’s purported internal investigation. The appellant also filed a
detailed affidavit running into 55 pages exclusively addressing the facts and
evidence in connection with her complaint of forgery on October 11, 2012.
This affidavit describes in detail the events of July 8, 9, and 10, 2010, the
weekend before July 12, 2010 when the technical bid was submitted by General
Electric for the Marhowra tender and when the forgery took place.

The brief
details of the Appellant’s complaint with a brief narration of facts
concerning the forgery

The Appellant
worked for General Electric as Legal Counsel during May, June, July, August
and September 2010, and was involved in the preparation of General
Electric’s RFQ application dated July 12, 2010 which included the tampered
document. Therefore the petitioner’s evidence is based upon her personal
knowledge of the facts. General Electric had a customer certificate that
Kazakhstan Railway had issued to General Electric around December 2009/
January 2010. General Electric needed to submit this document in original
to the Railway Ministry along with General Electric’s technical bid for the
2010 Marhowra tender in order to satisfy the RFQ technical capacity
eligibility criteria (in particular the requirement that the prior
locomotive sales should have had at least two variants which the RFQ
defined as gauge variations or service application variations). This
customer certificate from Kazakhstan Railway was undated and therefore
non-compliant with the format for customer certificates prescribed in the
RFQ. This fact that the certificate was non-compliant was pointed out by
the petitioner to colleagues at General Electric at the end of June 2010
(the RFQ application was due on July 12, 2010).

Unknown to the
petitioner, sometime between the end of June 2010 and July 9, 2010, General
Electric executives/ employees (including Pratyush Kumar, Ashfaq Nainar,
Gaurav Negi. Ramesh Mathur,Ashish Malhotra and Praveena Yagnambhat) entered
into a criminal conspiracy to add a false date to the undated customer
certificate and to submit this altered and therefore forged document along
with General Electric’s RFQ application to the Railway Ministry on July 12,
2010. The petitioner states that this conspiracy was carried out and the
document that was submitted by General Electric to the Railway Ministry on
July 12, 2010 as part of General Electric’s RFQ for the 2010 Marhowra
tender as the customer certificate issued by Kazakhstan Railway was a
tampered and forged document. The document submitted was the original copy
of the Kazakhstan Railway certificate that General Electric obtained in
December 2009/ January 2010. This document was altered and a false date
(July 7, 2010) was added to this undated document by the hand of one of the
General Electric executives involved in the criminal conspiracy. This
altered and forged document was then submitted to the Indian Railway on
July 12, 2010 with General Electric’s RFQ application.

As part of
this conspiracy, an elaborate and detailed fraud was perpetrated by these
General Electric executives (with other unknown co-conspirators) whereby a
record was created in internal General Electric emails that these
executives had obtained a fresh customer certificate from Kazakhstan Railway
which was compliant (dated), and that a scanned copy of this new
certificate would be submitted by General Electric, and that the Railway
Ministry had approved the submission of a scanned copy instead of the
original document.

In reality,
the afore-mentioned General Electric executives altered the old Kazakhstan
Railway certificate (which did not have a date) and added a false date
(July 7, 2010) to that document. This tampered/ forged document was then
slipped into General Electric’s RFQ application just before it was sent for
binding. No one else in General Electric, except those involved in this
conspiracy, would ever have known which document was eventually submitted
by General Electric. Also, the Railway Ministry would have accepted the
altered / forged document as an original certificate and would never have
raised any questions. It is also possible that the General Electric
executives involved in the conspiracy intended to claim that the new
original document from Kazakhstan Railways (which had been purportedly
couriered) had been delivered sometime during the weekend of 10 and 11 July
2010 and that this document had been substituted in place of the scanned
copy. As a result, even the internal General Electric record would have
shown that General Electric had submitted an original copy of a compliant
certificate.

This
conspiracy was foiled as a result of the petitioner recording on email on
the morning of July 10, 2010 that the General Electric team
consider including both documents in its RFQ application, i.e., the alleged
scanned copy of the fresh certificate and the undated original document. As
the undated original document had already been tampered, it was no longer
possible for the General Electric executives (involved in the forgery) to
include it. The plan was also foiled because the petitioner looked through
the bound RFQ application on July 10, 2010 and saw that this compilation
included an “original certificate” from Kazakhstan Railway that bore the
date July 7, 2010. As a result of the petitioner having seen evidence of
the forgery, she was drugged during the weekend of July 10 and 11, 2010 by/
at the behest of these General Electric executives. She was also bullied,
harassed and an attempt made to get her to participate in an unlawful act
(as described in the affidavit dated October 11, 2012 filed on the forgery
issue) which could then be used to blackmail the petitioner. After July 12,
2010, the petitioner was again drugged/ poisoned while these General
Electric executives participated in a further conspiracy to eliminate the
petitioner and to remove her by having her contract with General Electric
terminated. The petitioner was finally able to report this forgery only on
October 1, 2010 to the General Counsel for General Electric Company after
her contract with General Electric had been terminated in violation of
whistleblower non-retaliation laws and policies. Since then, the petitioner
has been subjected to further poisoning and drugging and her complaint of
this forgery has been covered up by General Electric. The petitioner’s life
remains in grave danger.

General
Electric through Mr Alexander Dimitrief’s letter dated February 3, 2011,
claims that documentary evidence disproves the petitioner’s complaint about
the forgery. This is incorrect. The documentary evidence discussed in
Alexander Dimitrief’s letter is irrelevant. He states: “We have compared
the printout of the certificate from the July 7 e-mail with GETI’s copy of
the Request for Qualification (“RFQ”) submitted to Indian Railways and they
are identical”.

The petitioner
submits that this does not establish that the certificate was not forged.
Why would General Electric executives retain evidence of the forgery and of
the tampered document on General Electric files? A close reading of
Alexander Dimitrief’s letter will establish that it does not provide any
evidence to establish that the petitioner’s complaint of forgery is without
basis. The letter misrepresents and ignores the petitioner’s written
evidence and attempts to falsely suggest that the petitioner withdrew her
complaint, whereas the petitioner did not.

The document
that General Electric eventually submitted to the Railway Ministry on July
12, 2010 was not a scanned copy of the fresh customer certificate dated
July 7, 2010. General Electric executives submitted the original
undated Kazakhstan Railway customer certificate after adding a false
date to it. This is the document the petitioner saw in the bound RFQ
application on July 10 and 11, 2010. The evidence that the petitioner
has shared in writing clearly shows the following:

i.
The document the petitioner saw in the RFQ compilation on the evening of 9
July 2010 contained a black and white copy of the Kazakhstan certificate.
This was the final set that was supposed to have been sent for binding.

ii.
The bound set that the petitioner saw on 10 July 2010 contained an entirely
different document (Kazakhstan certificate) that was in colour and looked
like an original leading the petitioner to ask her colleagues at General
Electric: “are you guys playing games with me?”

iii.
Ashish Malhotra (from General Electric) lied to the petitioner and told her
that the coloured document had been present in the set the petitioner
looked through on 9 July 2010. This is incorrect. The document the
petitioner saw on 9 July 2010 was a black and white document that on the
face of it looked like a copy.

The only
relevant evidence of the forgery is the document on the files of the
Railway Ministry, i.e., the document General Electric actually submitted.
The petitioner submits that a perusal of this document by this court will
establish that the document General Electric submitted was the original
undated Kazakhstan Railway customer certificate with a false date. Any reasonable
person wanting to investigate this forgery would look to the relevant
documentary evidence available with the Government. Why does General
Electric not want that evidence examined? The petitioner has
described the events of 10 and 11 July 2010 in great detail in writing.
There is hard evidence of the events of 10 and 11 July 1010 that have been
described by the petitioner. In addition, the petitioner has also detailed
the conspiracy to cover up this forgery that was put into effect
afterwards.

Ms. Sapra made
the following complaint to General Electric Company on 1.10.2010

I have been
spending a lot of time going over events from my time at GE. There
is an important issue about which I now have doubts in my mind.

In my review
of the Diesel Loco RFQ (due on 12 July 2010), I found that some customer
certs were deficient. I also raised and communicated concerns that the
certs might not adequately meet the technical capacity pre-qualification
criteria in the RFQ. All this is on record.

Week of 5th
July 2010

In the last
week before the submission date, during a meeting where Vinod Sharma ( an
external consultant) was also present, Prat and Ash took the decision to
submit scanned copies of a couple of certs as the originals were not
available. This according to them was the only available option at that
time. I pointed out then (as I had before and did again subsequently), that
the RFQ required originals and there was a risk of disqualification without
originals. Mr Sharma agreed with me on the need for originals and said
efforts must be made to get originals but if these did not arrive in time
then scanned copies were the best option. Later that evening, Prat and Ash
assured me that they would record their decision as a business
decision.

My advice to
Ashish all through the last week was to delay binding and wait for
the originals. I emailed and spoke to Tara and Jamie about this
issue. And I also spoke to Deepak on Friday evening. The papers were sent
for binding on Friday late evening. Earlier in the evening Ashish had given
me the original set to review and it had two scanned certs, the Vale and
the Kazakhstan cert. Both of these were black and white copies.

Weekend (10
& 11 July 2010)

On Saturday
morning I sent an email on this issue because I was concerned and because
Deepak had given some advice. This email is on record. Deepak called me on
Saturday and told me to now leave the issue/ decision to Prat and
Ash.

I went into
office on Saturday later and saw the bound version. I was surprised to find
the Kazakhstan cert (one of the missing originals) in color. It looked like
the original. I asked Ashish and Ramesh (I do not remember if Praveena was
in the room) “Are you guys playing games with me?” Basically I asked them
have you got the original because you told me it had not arrived. Ashish
told me this was a color printout. I said I got confused. It looked like an
original. I asked Ashish where did you get this. He said they had a color
scan and they decided to take a color printout.

Prat came in
later and Ashish told him Seema had gotten confused about the color
printout.

Even though
Ashish told me this was a color print-out, I now have doubts about this.
Prat and Ash were very angry about my Saturday email. There was a lot of
tension because of my email.

On Sunday, Ash
tried to trap me into getting a non-compliant Power of Attorney (POA) as he
raised a big hue and cry about a small mistake in the POA. I refused to get
the non-compliant POA and insisted that use the document we had.
[This was confirmed by three lawyers, Amit Kumar (Amarchand), Deepak
Adlakha and I. All three were of the view that there was no defect in the
POA we had.] When I said the existing POA was OK, Ash got upset and said I
had been going on for weeks about the customer certs and now I was not
concerned about the POA.

On Sunday,
Praveena claimed to have found a notary on the internet who could notarise
a new POA. Ash and Praveena wanted to send an office assistant to this
notary. I said I would go myself as I wanted to make sure it was all
genuine. I found the notary set-up a con and refused to get a new POA from
there. Despite my telling Ash (I called Ash from the notary’s office) my
concerns about this notary, he suggested I get the document and then we
could decide. I refused and said the existing POA could be used. Later I
found a genuine stamp paper vendor who issued stamp paper on Sunday. I also
located a genuine notary who could notarise the POA. When I asked Ash to
send his car for the stamp paper, Prat stepped in, called up Amit Kumar
(Amarchand) and decided we did not need a new POA. I think there was an
attempt to harass me over a minor defect in the POA and to trap me into
getting a non-compliant POA. Did Praveena really find the con notary on the
internet on Sunday? Was this a pre-planned conspiracy? Was this intended to
deflect my attention from the customer cert issue?

Prat bullied
and humiliated me in front of everyone on Sunday over other issues
(i.e., me questioning Ramesh sending out E Loco RFP queries to the
Government without review) leading me to tell him I would resign. Deepak
called me about this on Sunday evening.

I have given
these and subsequent events a lot of thought in the past few weeks.

I am concerned
about the Kazakhstan cert that was submitted. Was it a color print-out of a
color scan like I was told? The earlier scan I had seen was in black and
white. Was this a doctored/ manipulated document?

It is
important that GE ascertain whether the scan was in color or not? Where did
the color printout come from?

Were Prat and
Ash intending to pass off the Kazakhstan cert submitted as original? Was
this why my email of Saturday made them so angry?

If the color
copy filed is not a genuine print-out of a genuine color scanned copy then
the document could be seen as a forgery. GE must inform the Government
about any such forgery.

I have another
concern about this weekend.

My email
stopped working after my Saturday morning email. I tried to resolve the
problem on the phone with Varun (IT) on Saturday but could not. He could
not explain why my connection to the GE servers was down. There was
something wrong about my IP address. My email started working again on
Monday morning on its own. Did someone deliberately interfere with my
network connectivity? Why was my connection down on Saturday and Sunday.

Incidentally,
all through this weekend, I had severe lower back pain and was on
pain-killers.

All of this
also happened soon after I had spoken to Radhika about Prat and Praveena
and after I suspect Radhika warned Praveena.

Some other
thoughts:

Prat, Ash, Ramesh
and Praveena’s entire interaction with me as legal counsel for GE was in
bad faith.

While I was
still at AIFACS I noticed how anxious Prat, Ash, Ramesh and Praveena became
when I started talking about raising concerns.

I can prove
everything that happened on a day-to-day basis. There are so many
people who can bear me out on facts. But no one in GE was interested in
listening to what happened. GE’s response was to push me out, move me to
Gurgaon and then to ask me to leave. The paramount concern of people
I tried to speak to was that nothing should come in the way of the D loco
deal. And since Prat was not working well with me, I should be removed from
the role.

Thanks,

Seema

-

Seema Sapra

Ms. Seema Sapra
made the following complaint to the Railway Ministry on 23.12.2010.

I was employed
as Legal Counsel with GE Transportation in India at their Rafi Marg office
between April 2010 and September 2010. I am writing in connection with the
RFQ Application submitted by GE for the Marhowra project on 12 July 2010.

This application
contained a customer certificate from Kazakhstan railways. I would like to
bring to your notice that the Kazakhstan certificate submitted is not an
original copy. GE received the original of this certificate a few days
after the RFQ was submitted on 12 July. I have reasons to suspect that the
copy filed was faked to look like an original. I believe that GE might have
had a scanned copy of the original sent on email. However, I suspect that
this scanned copy was modified to look like an original and therefore a
faked certificate was submitted along with the RFQ.

I request you
to investigate this matter thoroughly. I had communicated my concern to GE
on 1 October 2010. Since then, GE has not confirmed to me that the
certificate filed was not forged. I have shared the reasons for my concern
with GE senior management and attorneys in their headquarters in the United
States.

As a lawyer
who was involved in the preparation of the RFQ application and as a citizen
of India, I have a legal right to know if the certificate was forged.
If it was forged, then I believe criminal offences have been committed.
Further GE is liable to be disqualified from the tender process. I request
the Railway Authorities to ascertain the truth from GE and kindly let me
know. I am copying GE on this request.

Kind Regards,

Seema Sapra

Advocate

G-4 First
Floor, Jangpura Extension,

New Delhi
110014

Ph. 99588
69955

Copy to:

John Flannery

GE India
Industrial Private Limited

Building 7A,
5th Floor

Sector 25A,
DLF Cyber City

Phase III, Gurgaon

Haryana 122
022

Ms. Seema Sapra
made the following complaint to Indian Government authorities on
11.1.2011

I am a lawyer
and have brought a possible forgery to the notice of the Railway Board in
respect of the RFQ submitted by GE for the diesel locomotive factory
(Marhowra) project. My email to the Railway Board is set out below.

I request that
this matter be looked into. I request that the Government obtain a
clarification from GE about this issue.

I was
employed as Legal Counsel with GE Transportation in India at their Rafi
Marg office between April 2010 and September 2010. I am writing in
connection with the RFQ Application submitted by GE for the Marhowra project
on 12 July 2010.

This
application contained a customer certificate from Kazakhstan railways. I
would like to bring to your notice that the Kazakhstan certificate
submitted is not an original copy. GE received the original of this
certificate a few days after the RFQ was submitted on 12 July. I have
reasons to suspect that the copy filed was faked to look like an original.
I believe that GE might have had a scanned copy of the original sent on
email. However, I suspect that this scanned copy was modified to look like
an original and therefore a faked certificate was submitted along with the
RFQ.

I request you
to investigate this matter thoroughly. I had communicated my concern to GE
on 1 October 2010. Since then, GE has not confirmed to me that the certificate
filed was not forged. I have shared the reasons for my concern with GE
senior management and attorneys in their headquarters in the United States.

As a lawyer
who was involved in the preparation of the RFQ application and as a citizen
of India, I have a legal right to know if the certificate was forged.
If it was forged, then I believe criminal offences have been committed.
Further GE is liable to be disqualified from the tender process. I request
the Railway Authorities to ascertain the truth from GE and kindly let me
know. I am copying GE on this request.

Kind Regards,

Seema Sapra

Advocate

G-4 First
Floor, Jangpura Extension,

New Delhi
110014

Ph. 99588
69955

Copy to:

John Flannery

GE India
Industrial Private Limited

Building 7A,
5th Floor

Sector 25A,
DLF Cyber City

Phase III,
Gurgaon

Haryana 122
022

Ms Seema Sapra
received the following communication from the Central Vigilance Commission
dated 30.5.2011.

CENTRAL
VIGILANCE COMMISSION

Telegraphic
Address:

“SATTARKA: New
Delhi

E-Mail Address

cenvigil@nic.in

Website

www.cvc.nic.in

EPABX

24651001 – 07

Fax: 24616286

Satarka
Bhawan, G.P.O. Complex,

Block A, INA,
New Delhi 110023

No.
1117/RLY/16/130260

Dated
30.05.2011

To,

Smt. Seema
Sapra,

Advocate,

G-4 First
Floor

Jangpura
Extesion

New Delhi – 110014

Sub: Complaint
against Railway official

Ref:
Your e-mail letter dated 11.01.2011

Sir,

Your e-mail
complaint has been registered as complaint no. 107/11/1 and has been
forwarded to Shri A.K. Maitra, Advisor (Vig), Railway Board, Rail Bhawan,
New Delhi for investigation and submission of a report within three months
from the date of receipt of Commission’s reference.

2. The
Commission would be obtaining a report from the department in due course.
If you wish to see the status of your e-mail complaint, you may log on to
the Commission’s website http://www/cvc/nic/in by entering the complaint
number given above, in the field complaint status. The current status of
your complaint would be displayed on the screen.

Yours faithfully

(SK Gwaliya)

Section Officer

Notice was
issued to the CVC and the Railway Ministry (among others) in Writ Petition
Civil No. 1280/2012 on 7.3.2012.

The following
statement was made in the affidavit dated 2.7.2012 filed for the Railway
Ministry.

That the
Central Vigilance Commission vide its letter No. 1117/RLY/16/124624 dated
11.04.2011 had forwarded to Railway Board a copy of email complaint dated
11.01.2011 received in the Commission from Ms. Seema Sapra, Advocate, New
Delhi in which the complainant alleged that fake Customer Certificate was
submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt/ Ltd. in connection with
Request for Qualification (RFQ) for setting up Diesel Locomotive Factory at
Marhowra, District – Saran, Bihar. On receipt of the complaint, the matter
was got thoroughly investigated and the investigation has revealed that
Clause 3.2 related to ‘Technical Capacity’, inter-alia, mentioned that the
applicant firm should have manufactured and supplied at least 1000 Mainline
Diesel Electric Locomotives over the period of last ten years. Scrutiny of
the tender file revealed that as per the Customers’ Certificate attached at
page 63 to 113 of the RFQ submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd.,
the company had designed, manufactured and supplied total 2326 mainline
Diesel Electric Locomotives over a period of last ten years. Thus, it is
noticed that even if the Customer Certificate issued by Kazakhstan Railway
for 10. No. of locomotives supplied by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt.
Ltd., is discarded, the firm was fulfilling the Technical Capacity”
criteria, as the requirement as per clause 3.2 of the RFQ is only 1000
locomotives over the period of last ten years. Thus, investigation has found
that the firm M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. has not derived any
advantage by submitting the scanned copy. Therefore, no substance was found
in the allegation. The report of investigation was sent to the Central
Vigilance Commission and the Central Vigilance Commission after perusal of
the Investigation Report and the comments of the administrative authorities
thereon has advised closure of the case vide CVC’s ID No.
1117/RLY/16/145435 dated 19.09.2011 (Annexure-R-1).

CVC document
produced along with Railway Ministry affidavit dated 2.7.2012

CENTRAL
VIGILANCE COMMISSION

The Commission
has perused the investigation report and the comments of the administrative
authorities thereon. In agreement with the RB(Vigilance), the Commission
would advise closure of the complaint case.

The Railway
Ministry misled the Delhi High Court that General Electric did not need the
Kazakhstan Railway certificate to qualify.

The only finding
of the “investigation” was that according to the Railway Ministry, General
Electric did not benefit from submitting the Kazakhstan Certificate and that
even if that certificate is discarded, General Electric fulfilled the technical
capacity criteria.

It was on this
basis that the Railway Ministry affidavit dated 2.7.2013 stated the
following:

“Thus,
investigation has found that the firm M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd.
has not derived any advantage by submitting the scanned copy. Therefore, no
substance was found in the allegation.”

Two-point
response to this affidavit of the Railway Ministry

i. General
Electric did need the Kazakhstan certificate to qualify, therefore this
certificate could not be discarded. General Electric did therefore
benefit from filing this certificate.

iii. The
complaint of forgery has not been investigated.

In her response,
the Petitioner also pointed out that the only document produced with the
Railway Ministry affidavit dated 2.7.2012 was the CVC document dated
19.9.2011 which did not shed any light on the matter. The Petitioner had
therefore submitted in her subsequent applications and affidavits that the
Railway Ministry and the CVC be directed to produce the actual investigation
report.

Another
affidavit dated 1.14.2013 was filed for the Railway Ministry. In this
affidavit, the following statement was made in paragraph 172:

“A true copy of
the advice received from the Central Vigilance Commission and a true copy of
the brief on the investigation conducted by the Railway Board (Vigilance) on
the complaint dated 11.01.2011 made by the Petitioner to the CVC are annexed
herewith and marked as Annexure R-10 (Colly).”

Attached to this
affidavit as Annexure R-10 (Colly) were three documents. These are reproduced
below.

A brief on the investigation conducted by Railway board Vigilance on the
complaint dated 11.01.2011 made by Ms. Seema Sapra, Advocate to CVC is
enclosed as desired.

(R.V.Nair)

JDV(Int.)

25.06.2012

Adv.(Vig.)

EDME(Proj.)

BRIEF ON THE
INVESTIGATION CONDUCTED BY RAILWAY BOARD VIGILANCE ON THE COMPLAINT MADE TO
CVC BY MS. SEEMA SAPRA, ADVOCATE.

Central
Vigilance Commission vide its letter No.1117/RLY/15/124624 dated 11.04.2011
had forwarded to Railway Board a copy of e-mail complaint dated
11.01.2011 received in the Commission from Ms. Seema Sapra, advocate, New
Delhi in which the complainant alleged that fake Customer Certificate was
submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. in connection with
Request for Qualification (RFQ) for setting up Diesel Locomotive Factory at
Marhowra - District Saran, Bihar.

Investigation
has revealed that Clause 3.2 related to ‘Technical Capacity”, inter alia
mentioned that the applicant firm should have manufactured and supplied
at least 1000 Mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives over the
period of last ten years.

Scrutiny of
the tender file revealed that as per the Customers’ Certificate attached at
page 63 to 113 of the RFQ, M/s GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. had
designed, manufactured and supplied total 2326 mainline Diesel Electric
Locomotives over a period of last ten years. Thus, it is noticed that even
if the Customer Certificate issued by Kazakhstan Railway for 10. No. of
locomotives supplied by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. is
discarded, the firm was fulfilling the “technical Capacity” criteria, as
the requirement as per clause 3.2 of the RFQ is only 1000 locomotives over
the period of last ten years. Thus, investigation has found that the firm
M/S. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. has not derived any advantage by
submitting the scanned copy. Therefore, no substance was found in the
allegation.

The Central
Vigilance Commission after perusal of the Investigation Report and
the comments of the administrative authorities thereon has advised
closure of the case vide CVC/s ID No. 1117/RLY/16/145435 dated 19.09.2011.

The third
document was the CVC communication dated 19.9.2011 which has already been
reproduced above.

Now this CVC
document dated 19.9.2011 refers to four documents :-

(i) an
investigation report

(ii) comments of
the administrative authorities on the investigation report

None of these
four documents mentioned in the CVC communication have been produced along
with the Railway Ministry affidavit dated 14.1. 2013.

Instead there is
an unsigned note which verbatim repeats what was stated in the first Railway
Ministry affidavit of 2.7.2012. This unsigned note is titled “BRIEF ON THE
INVESTIGATION CONDUCTED BY RAILWAY BOARD VIGILANCE ON THE COMPLAINT MADE TO
CVC BY MS. SEEMA SAPRA, ADVOCATE”. This note refers to a Central Vigilance
Commission letter No.1117/RLY/15/124624 dated 11.04.2011 which “had forwarded
to Railway Board a copy of e-mail complaint dated 11.01.2011 received in the
Commission from Ms. Seema Sapra, advocate,”

Note the
discrepancy here. The CVC note of 19.9.2011 which is relied upon to support
the closure of the case refers to a Railway Board letter with ID
No./2011/VC/RB/10-CVC and dated 12.02.2011.

How did the
Railway Board write to the CVC about this complaint (and recommend closure on
12.02.2011) when the unsigned note titled “BRIEF ON THE
INVESTIGATION CONDUCTED BY RAILWAY BOARD VIGILANCE ON THE COMPLAINT MADE TO
CVC BY MS. SEEMA SAPRA, ADVOCATE” claims that it received the complaint from
the CVC on 11.04.2011?

The other
document produced with the Railway Ministry affidavit dated 14.1.2013 is an
internal Railway Ministry communication dated 25.06.2012 enclosing the
unsigned note and referring to it as the “EDME(Project)’s note dated
22.06.2012”.

So the Railway
Ministry has not produced any report of investigation carried out by its
vigilance department or by the CVC.

All it has
produced is an unsigned note referred to as the EDME(Project)’s note dated
22.06.2012. EDME refers to Executive Director Mechanical Engineering. Even
the name of the officer who has allegedly written this note is not provided.

So there is no
investigation report. Instead the Railway Ministry affidavit dated 14.1.2013
attempts to misrepresent and pass off an anonymous unsigned note referred to
as the EDME(Project)’s note dated 22.06.2012 as the investigation report of
the vigilance branch. Note that the Executive Director Mechanical
Engineering is not part of the vigilance department.

So it is clear
that there has been no investigation by the CVC or Railway Vigilance on the
complaint of forgery. Forged and fraudulent documents suggesting this
have been filed with the Railway Ministry affidavits dated 2.7.2012 and
14.1.2013.

False and
perjurious statements have been made in these affidavits lying to the Court
that the forgery complaint was investigated and that the CVC approved of the
investigation and recommended closure of the case.

These false
statements include the following false statement made in para 196 of the
affidavit dated 14.1.2013:

“it is
respectfully submitted that the summary of the investigation report by the
Vigilance Directorate, as endorsed by the CVC, has been placed before the
Hon’ble Court. In terms of the recommendation, the case has been closed.”

The complaint of
forgery was not investigated either by the Railway Ministry Vigilance
Department or by the Central Vigilance Commission. Instead the attempt has
been to cover up this matter and to avoid an investigation into the complaint
of forgery.

General Electric
did need the Kazakhstan Railways certificate qualify.

Clause 3.2.1
of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ

“Subject to
the provisions of Clause 2.2, the Applicant shall:

a) over the
period of last ten (10) years, have manufactured and supplied at least 1000
Mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives and:

i. such
Locomotives should comprise at least 2 Variants; a Variant for the purpose
of this RFQ Document shall mean a Locomotive with different gauge or with
different service application;

ii. the supply
of such Locomotives should have been to three (3) or more countries;

iii. 200 or
more of such Diesel Electric Locomotives should be of 4000 HP (or higher)
with AC-AC 3-phase and IGBT technology; iv. 25 or more of such Diesel
Electric Locomotives should be of 6000 HP (or higher)”

Thus the Railway
Ministry affidavit dated 2,7.2012 falsely stated that General Electric only
needed evidence of manufacture and supply of 1000 mainline Diesel Electric
locomotives. As is clear from Clause 3.2.1 (reproduced above), a bidder also
needed to provide customer certificates to show that it met the other
conditions/ criteria prescribed in Clause 3.2.1. The 1000 locomotives relied
upon by a bidder needed to have at least two variants. These locomotives
should have been supplied to at least three countries. 200 of these
locomotives should have been of at least 4000 HP with AC-AC 3-phase and IGBT
technology. And at least 25 of these locomotives should have been of at least
6000 HP.

While General
Electric did not need the Kazakhstan Railways customer certificate to certify
the requirement for prior manufacture and supply of 1000 locomotives, it did
need this certificate to meet the requirement that these locomotives should
comprise of two variants (i.e., locomotives with either gauge variations or
service application variations). General Electric did not meet the
requirement for two variants prescribed by Clause 3.2.1 without the
Kazakhstan Railways customer certificate which covered a gauge variant. This
was also the internal understanding in General Electric and is recorded on
internal General Electric emails.

Further the
submission of a forged certificate amounted to a material misrepresentation
under clause 2.7.3 of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ and a fraudulent practice under
clause 4.1.3 (b) of the 2010 Marhowra RFQ. The submission of a forged/
tampered customer certificate therefore rendered General Electric liable for
mandatory disqualification and blacklisting for a period of two years (Clause
4.1.1 and Clause 4.1.2 of the RFQ). It also amounts to the criminal
offence of forgery under both Indian and US law.

The Division
Bench of Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P.S. Teji who wrongly dismissed Writ
Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 did not permit the petitioner to argue the
matter at all. The Petitioner was unable to even mention the issue of the
forgery complaint during the four hearings on 19, 20, 22 January and 3
February 2015 before this Bench, leave alone argue.

Yet without even
hearing the petitioner on this issue or indeed hearing anyone else, or examining
the court record, or considering the affidavits filed by the petitioner, the
judgment dated 2.3.2015 issued by Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P.S. Teji
includes the following statement:

In fact, the petitioner had filed a complaint
with CVC with regard to some of her allegations made in this petition, and
the records of this court show that after replying to the petitioner that
the complaint has been looked into, CVC ultimately had advised closure of
the case and this is so stated in the counter- affidavit of respondents no.
2 and 4/Railways dated 2.7.2012 and the relevant para of the
counter-affidavit is para 3 which reads as under:-

"3. That the Central Vigilance Commission vide its letter No.
1117/RLY/16/124624 dated 11.04.2011 had forwarded to Railway Board a copy
of e-mail complaint dated 11.01.2011 received in the Commission from Ms.
Seema Sapra, Advocate, New Delhi in which the complainant alleged that fake
Customer Certificate was submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt.
Ltd. in connection with Request for Qualification (RFQ) for setting up
Diesel Locomotive Factory at Marhowra, District - Saran, Bihar. On receipt
of the complaint, the matter was got thoroughly investigated and the
investigation has revealed that Clause 3.2 related to "Technical
Capacity', inter-alia, mentioned that the applicant firm should have
manufactured and supplied at least 1000 Mainline Diesel Electric
Locomotives over the period of last ten years. Scrutiny of the tender file
revealed that as per the Customers' Certificate attached at page 63 to 113
of the RFQ submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd., the
company had designed, manufactured and supplied total 2326 mainline Diesel
Electric Locomotives over a period of last ten years. Thus, it is noticed that
even if the Customer Certificate issued by Kazakhstan Railway for 10 No. of
locomotives supplied by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. is
discarded, the firm was fulfilling the 'Technical Capacity' criteria, as
the requirement as per clause 3.2 of the RFQ is only 1000 locomotives over
the period of last ten years. Thus, investigation has found that the firm
M/s. Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. has not derived any advantage by
submitting the scanned copy. Therefore, no substance was found in the allegation.
The report of investigation was sent to the Central Vigilance Commission
and the Central Vigilance Commission after perusal of the Investigation
Report and the comments of the administrative authorities thereon has
advised closure of the case vide CVC's ID No. 117/RLY/16/145435 dated
19.09.20111 (Annesure R-1)." (underling added)

This is the only
reference in the judgment to the court record and it refers to and relies
upon a patently false statement made in the Railway Ministry affidavit dated 2.7.2012.
This statement has been included in the judgment without hearing the
petitioner, without examining the court record, and without considering the
affidavits of the petitioner and her submissions therein.

The result is
that this judgment which expressly refuses to look at the court record and
states this at more than one place, picks up a portion of a Railway Affidavit
that amounts to perjury and inserts it into the judgment as if this were a
finding of the Court, without hearing the parties.

As elaborated
hereinabove, this statement in the Railway Ministry affidavit was not only
false but perjurious, intended to mislead the Court, and based upon
fabricated documents.

There has been
no CVC investigation into the complaint of forgery.

Once again the judgment
issued by Judge Valmiki Mehta and Judge P.S. Tegi is deeply flawed. The
result is a cover-up of the corruption complaints against General Electric
including this particular complaint of forgery.

26. Other material
and evidence before the Delhi High Court in connection with the appellant’s
whistleblower complaints against General Electric Company is being filed in a
separate volume.

27. From the
above preliminary and incomplete recital above of the appellant’s whistleblower
complaints alongwith an indication of the kind of material that was available
before the Delhi High Court, it is clear that the judgment in the writ petition
issued by the Division Benchof Justice Valmiki Mehta and Justice P.S. Teji is
wrong. As a result of this incorrect decision, the protection orders (not very
useful as they were) passed in favour of the whistleblower-appellant have
ended. The appellant’s life is put at grave risk as a result of this judgment.
The appellant has suffered the consequences of this over the last one year in
being deliberately targeted by exposure to highly toxic chemical fumes, gases
and inhalants. She has been chronically poisoned over this last year and has
even been drugged on a few occasions.

28. The
appellant initially wanted to let the matter rest after 2 March 2015 because of
the threat to her life. However, the appellant has continued to be poisoned. The
petitioner’s life has been made hell. She is homeless, has no money, is being
prevented from working, is being defamed, and is being chronically poisoned.
There is a clear agenda to destroy the appellant-whistleblower. The appellant
intends to file a petition under Article 32 before this Hon’ble Court in
respect of her whistleblower complaints against General Electric Company and in
respect of the past and continued violation of the petitioner’s right to life
as a result. It is submitted that there is no res judicata bar to the
petitioner seeking relief for the continued violation of her right to life
under Article 32. Further it is clear that Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012
has not been decided on merits, and it had not considered the material before
it. Further this petition was disposed in the absence of several necessary
respondents who were not present before the court including General Electric
Company and its subsidiaries. Other bidders like Siemens AG were not present.
The lawyers who appeared for EMD, Alstom and Siemens India did not produce
authority documents with the vakalatnamas which were filed. The judgment in the
writ petition has not settled the points of controversy therein. The judgment
is clearly a non-speaking order. Almost all of the subject matter of that
petition has not been considered in this judgment, it is a non-speaking order
without reasoning and is nothing but a summary dismissal by the Division Bench
and a refusal to adjudicate the matter. Therefore, there is no bar of res
judicata to an article 32 petition as per the decision of this Hon’ble Court in
Daryao and Others vs The State Of U. P. And Others 1962 SCR (1) 574. The fresh
Marhowra tender instituted during the pendency of Writ Petition Civil No. 1280
of 2012 in 2013 has been awarded to General Electric by the Railway Ministry in
November 2015. This award is vitiated on account of the cover-up of the
corruption complaints against General Electric and the fraud and perjury
committed against the Delhi High Court on behalf of General Electric and the
Railway Ministry. In any event the law of the land requires that these complaints
be properly investigated, the forgery, fraud, corruption and perjury be
punished. A fraud committed on the judiciary of the magnitude described above
is no small matter that the Government of India can simply ignore.

29. The
appellant is also continuing to pursue her remedies against General Electric
Company with the US authorities, the FBI, the US Department of Justice and the
Securities Exchange Commission. In August 2015, the appellant has filed a
complaint with the SEC as a whistleblower through its online complaint intake portal
and this complaint has been registered as TCR1439646785831. A copy of this
complaint as submitted through the SEC portal web form is reproduced below.

Please select the
specific category that best describes your complaint

Bribery of
foreign officials

Provide
additional details about your complaint:

Former General
Electric in-house counsel Seema Sapra filed a legal proceeding in the Delhi
High Court (Writ Petition Civil No. 1280 of 2012) against General Electric
Company and two Indian subsidiaries (GE India Industrial Private Limited and
GE Global Sourcing India Private Limited). The Delhi High Court issued notice
in this matter to General Electric Company, GE India Industrial Private
Limited and GE Global Sourcing India Private Limited on 7 March 2012. A copy
of the Delhi High Court order dated 7 March 2012 can be viewed on the Delhi
High Court website at
http://delhihighcourt.nic.in/dhcqrydisp_o.asp?pn=49717&yr=2012 Instead of
appearing before the Delhi High Court in this matter through properly
authorized and competent person/s, General Electric Company lawyers and
executives (including General Counsel Brackett Denniston, and GE in-house
lawyers Alexander Dimitref, Bradford Berenson, and Jeffrey Eglash), caused
this legal proceeding to remain hidden from General Electric Company and
caused an Indian subsidiary employee K R Radhakrishnan to impersonate as the
authorized signatory/ representative of General Electric Company before the
Delhi High Court in these legal proceedings between 2012 and 2015 using
fraudulent and forged authority documents on behalf of General Electric
Company. With the help of this fraud, and using other dishonest, corrupt and
illegal means, General Electric Company is attempting to cover up the
corruption and FCPA complaints against it in connection with its bids for two
Indian Railway tenders - the tenders for the proposed diesel locomotive
factory in Marhowra and the tenders for the proposed electric locomotive
factory in Madhepura. Under Indian law, a lawyer representing a Party to a
judicial proceeding must produce on the court record a duly executed
'vakalatnama', which is a specialized form of a Power of Attorney granted by
the Party to the lawyer to represent it in Court. Under Indian law, a lawyer
cannot appear for a Party in judicial proceedings without producing a duly
executed vakalatnama in his favor by the client. Further under Indian law, in
case the party to the judicial proceeding is a corporate entity, then the
authorized signatory/ representative of the corporate entity who executes the
vakalatnama and other court pleadings on behalf of such corporate entity,
must produce on the court record the documentation that establishes such
person as the duly authorized signatory and representative of the corporate
entity for such legal proceedings. From July 2012 to March 2012, an Indian
citizen named K R Radhakrishnan has unlawfully and fraudulently impersonated
as the authorized signatory and representative of General Electric Company
before the Delhi High Court in Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012. K R
Radhakrishnan is neither an officer nor employee of General Electric Company.
He claims to be the Company Secretary of GE India Industrial Private Limited
which is a wholly owned Indian subsidiary of General Electric Company. K R
Radhakrishnan has purported to execute vakalatnamas (Powers of Attorney) and
court affidavits/ pleadings on behalf of General Electric Company which were
filed in the Delhi High Court on behalf of General Electric Company. Under
the Board Resolution No.10855 of General Electric Company listing out the
persons who are entitled to execute documents on behalf of General Electric
Company (including Powers of Attorney and Court pleadings), K R Radhakrishnan
was not entitled to act as authorized signatory of General Electric Company
before the Delhi High Court and was not entitled to execute any Powers of
Attorney or Court pleadings on behalf of General Electric Company. This Board
Resolution of General Electric Company can be read at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxHBZ8fQxNoQeGU2OGozcGtYR28/view?usp=sharing
The Court record for Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/ 2012 can be found at
http://seemasapra.blogspot.in/p/updated-court-documents-in-whistle.html

Have you taken
any action regarding your complaint? You may select more than one

Complained to
firm; Complained to other regulator; Complained to SEC; Complained to law
enforcement; Legal action;

Who did you
contact and what action did you take?

I have emailed
the SEC, the US DOJ, the FBI. I sued General Electric Company in the Delhi
High Court.

Who are you
complaining about?

Are you
complaining about an individual or a firm?

Firm

Select the title
that best describes the individual or firm that you are complaining about:

Publicly held
company

Firm Name:

General Electric
Company

Street Address:

3135 Easton
Turnpike

City:

Fairfield

State / Province:

Connecticut

Zip / Postal
Code:

CT 06828-0001

Country:

USA

Telephone:

Are you or were
you associated with the individual or firm when the alleged conduct occurred?

Yes

How are you or
were you associated with the individual or firm you are complaining about?

I was working as
in-house legal counsel in India helping GE Transportation (US) bid for Indian
Rail contracts

Products involved

Select the type
of product involved in your complaint:

Other

Please select the
category that best describes your security product:

Other

For other, please
provide more information:

Indian rail
tenders

Enter the product
name(s):

locomotives

About you

*Are you
submitting this tip, complaint or referral pursuant to the SEC's
whistleblower program?

Yes

*Are you
submitting this tip, complaint or referral anonymously? Being able to contact
you for further information or clarification may be helpful.

No

**Are you
represented by an attorney in connection with your submission?

No

Submitter
Information

Title:

Ms.

**First Name:

Seema Sapra

**Last Name:

Sapra

Street Address:

39

Address
(Continued):

Prithviraj Road

City:

New Delhi

State / Province:

Delhi

Zip / Postal
Code:

1100011

Country:

India

Mobile Telephone:

00919582716748

Email Address:

seema.sapra@gmail.com

What is the best
way to contact you?

Email

Select the
profession that best represents you:

Attorney

Whistleblower
Declarations

*1. Are you, or
were you at the time you acquired the original information you are submitting
to us, a member, officer, or employee of the Department of Justice, the Securities
and Exchange Commission, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Public Company Accounting
Oversight Board, any law enforcement organization, or any national securities
exchange, registered securities association, registered clearing agency, or
the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board?

No

*2. Are you, or
were you at the time you acquired the original information you are submitting
to us, a member, officer, or employee of a foreign government, any political
subdivision, department, agency, or instrumentality of a foreign government,
or any other foreign financial regulatory authority as that term is defined
in Section 3(a)(52) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C.
§78c(a)(52))?

No

*3. Did you
acquire the information being submitted to us through the performance of an
engagement required under the federal securities laws by an independent
public accountant?

No

*4. Are you
submitting this information pursuant to a cooperation agreement with the SEC
or another agency or organization?

No

*5. Are you a
spouse, parent, child, or sibling of a member or employee of the SEC, or do
you reside in the same household as a member or employee of the SEC?

No

*7a. Are you
submitting this information before you (or anyone representing you) received
any investigative request, inquiry, or demand that relates to the subject
matter of your submission from the SEC, Congress, or any other federal,
state, or local authority, any self regulatory organization, or the Public
Company Accounting Oversight Board?

Yes

*8a. Are you
currently a subject or target of a criminal investigation, or have you been
convicted of a criminal violation, in connection with the information you are
submitting to the SEC?

No

*9a. Did you
acquire the information being provided to us from any person described in
questions 1 through 8?

No

10. Identify with
particularity any documents or other information in your submission that you
believe could reasonably be expected to reveal your identity, and explain the
basis for your belief that your identity would be revealed if the documents
were disclosed to a third party.

I do not wish to
keep my identity public. I have already made my identity as a whistleblower
public.

*I declare under
penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States that the information
contained in this submission is true, correct, and complete to the best of my
knowledge, information, and belief. I fully understand that I may be subject
to prosecution and ineligible for a whistleblower award if, in my submission
of information, my other dealings with the SEC, or my dealings with another
authority in connection with a related action, I knowingly and willfully make
any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, or use
any false writing or document knowing that the writing or document contains
any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry.

Agree

30. Before
proceeding to the impugned judgment in the contempt matter, a brief dissection
and discussion of the judgment of the Division Bench in Writ Petition Civil No.
1280/2012 is presented below. The complete judgment is being filed in a
separate volume. This judgment is of 100 pages but most of it refers to
material not relevant to the merits of the case.

31. The writ
judgment begins with the following introduction.

1.
This writ petition, which is essentially in two parts qua the causes
of action and reliefs claimed, can be in one way disposed of by a very short
judgment, because, the first part/aspect and the reliefs claimed with respect
thereto of challenge to the 2010 tender process of Railways for setting up
manufacturing units for diesel and electric locomotive tenders has become
infructuous because the tender process has been cancelled by the Ministry
over one and a half years back, and the second part/aspect of the related
reliefs of petitioner's claim as a whistle blower for grant of security to
her by the State is without any basis whatsoever and hence cannot be granted.
The judgment however will have to be a bit prolix in view of the aspect given
below, including the aspect that petitioner has caused 28 judges of this
Court to recuse from hearing the matter and that there have been over 90
hearings in the writ petition and the interim applications mostly filed by
the petitioner.

2. Let
us at this stage turn to the relief clauses of the writ petition:-

"1. Summon the records of Respondent Nos. 2,4 and
5 on whistle-blower complaints made by the Petitioner and after examining the
records and hearing the Respondents, issue a writ of mandamus to Respondent 4
directing that Respondent 7 be disqualified and Respondent Nos. 1,6 and 7 be
black-listed from the Diesel and Electric Locomotive Tenders (Global RFQ
No.2010/ME (Proj)/4/Marhoura/RFQ
and RFQ No. 2010/Elect. (Dev0 440/1(1).

2. Issue writs
of mandamus to Respondent Nos. 2,4 and 5 directing them to respond to and act
upon the said whistle-blower complaints in accordance with law.

3. Direct that
Respondent No.2 inquire into commission of criminal offences (including
forgery, bribery and public corruption) arising out of the Petitioner's
whistle-blower complaints and direct prosecution of GE employees and
government officials and public servants found involved and complicit.

4. Enforce and
protect the right to life of the Petitioner and direct that the Petitioner be
provided full protection and safety and be immediately relocated to a safe
house. 5. Pass such other and
further orders as Hon'ble Court may deem fit and proper."

3(i) The
first three reliefs pertain to the 2010 tenders process of the Railways for
setting up diesel and electric locomotive manufacturing units at Madhepura and
Marhowra. A reading of the first three reliefs prayed shows that the
petitioner claims that respondent nos. 1,6 and 7, and which are the
G.E.Electric Company and its sister companies (hereinafter jointly referred
to as G.E); be disqualified from the subject tenders and G.E. be also black
listed. Petitioner seeks the related reliefs that respondent nos. 2,4 and 5
i.e Central Vigilance Commission (CVC); Indian Railways, and ; Prime
Minister's Office (PMO) respectively, act upon the complaints of the petitioner
with respect to the petitioner's claims of forgery, corruption etc with
respect to the aforesaid tenders.

(ii) The
fourth relief that the petitioner seeks is that the petitioner alleges that
her life is in danger on account of her acting as a whistle-blower qua the
aforesaid tenders, and therefore, she be provided full protection and safety
by the government including by immediate relocation to a safe house.

4. On
31.5.2013, the date fixed in the case, a Division Bench of this Court
recorded the statement made by Sh. Rajeeve Mehra, the then Additional
Solicitor General(ASG) that the tenders in respect of which the main part of
the writ petition pertained to had been cancelled and the entire process has
restarted from the beginning. The writ petition therefore at this stage
itself ordinarily ought to have been brought to an end, inasmuch as, once the
tender process itself had been cancelled, there did not survive any major
aspect or issue, except of course the self-serving claim of the petitioner
that G.E be black listed on account of allegations made by her of forgery and
corruption, but even after the statement of the ASG was recorded on
31.5.2013, over 40 dates of hearings were still fixed in the writ petition,
and which really was because petitioner did not want that the proceedings in
this petition should come to an end.

5. A
few salient features of the case are noted at the very outset since these
aspects will run as a golden thread through the entire case discussion, and
which are as under:-

(i) The petitioner's averments in the writ
petition are basically only self-serving allegations, and there is no
independent corroborative basis of documentary evidence to support the
allegations which have been made by the petitioner. The documentary evidence
which the petitioner relies upon, essentially for the major part pertains to
but her own correspondence and communications with different respondents,
persons and bodies/entities.

(ii)
Petitioner, who is an advocate, and claims to be a whistle blower, was
employed with the respondent no.1 as a legal consultant. The contract between
the petitioner and the respondent no.1 was for 11 months from 21.4.2010 to
20.3.2011, however, petitioner's services were prematurely terminated in
around September 2010. Petitioner therefore is not a dis-interested person
acting bonafidely in filing this Public Interest Litigation (PIL), and the
writ petition has been filed essentially to get even with her employer for
having terminated her contractual services.

(iii) Whenever
the writ petition came up before any Bench, the standard operating procedure
of the petitioner was for some totally uncalled for reason or the other to
cause recusal of the Judges constituting the Bench by expressing lack of
confidence in the Bench or making false allegations against the judges
constituting the Bench or creating scenes in Courts etc, and which modalities
were adapted even before this Bench, and which had to conclude the hearings
by passing a judicial order for reserving the judgment in this case.

32. Para 6 which
follows merely reproduces the order dated 3.2.2015 by which judgment was
reserved.

33. The Writ
judgment then contains the following observation in para 7.

7.
Before we turn in detail to the conduct of the petitioner including as
noticed in the various orders passed by this Court, and that as many as 28
judges of this Court had to recuse themselves from the matter, we would like
to set down the various observations of the Supreme Court made in its
different judgments with respect to parameters of entertaining and deciding a
PIL. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that in sum and substance a PIL
litigation as is/was intended can be/is a bona fide litigation and which is
not/cannot be a private interest litigation or a politics interest litigation
or a paisa income litigation. Courts have come down with heavy hands on the
regular misuse of PILs by certain sections of the citizens of this country
whereby the entire objects of a PIL were being defeated, inasmuch as the
concept of PIL was created by judicial pronouncements with respect to matters
of essentially far reaching public interest and for those circumstances where
the downtrodden and weak sections of the community could not approach the
courts and therefore they were represented before Courts by public spirited
persons who filed PILs on their behalf. Wherever underlining is given
hereinafter in this judgment, the same is for showing importance/emphasis to
the relevant observations.

34. The writ
judgment in paras 8-14 then merely refers to and reproduces extracts from
various decisions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India on PIL etiquette and
PIL abuse. This section comprises about 11 pages out of the 100 page judgment.

35. Then the
writ judgment includes the following observations in para 15.

15.
Keeping in mind the aforesaid observations of the Supreme Court as
regards PILs, it is found that the facts of the present case show that the
present writ petition suffers from all the ills which the Supreme Court has
reminded time and again that PILs should not suffer from including that they
should not be a private interest litigation filed on account of
animosity/vendetta. The effect of the present PIL continuing in this court
for 90 hearings and over three years, is that the same has resulted in gross
and criminal wastage of judicial time, and, time being deprived for the
courts to look into cases of other litigants who have been waiting for years
together in queue for their cases to be heard in their normal turn. The
present writ petition, its filing, its unnecessary continuation in spite of
the 2010 tenders being cancelled by the government, unnecessary and repeated
applications being filed in the same (running into around 35 in number most
of which are only of the petitioner), petitioner levelling all kinds of false
allegations against different Benches of this court left right and centre and
petitioner making uncalled for allegations against almost anyone and everyone
who in some way have been remotely concerned with the subject matter though
not really related to the case in any manner, shows that the present case is
a classic case of the abuse of the PIL process. In order to show such
malafides of the petitioner, some orders which have been passed by different
Benches of this Court from time to time would be required to be referred to
and such orders would include orders of recusal of different Benches of this
Court and the same are as under:-

36. After para
15, the writ judgment merely reproduces verbatim 43 previous orders passed in
Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012. This starts at page 19 of the judgment and
goes on till page 54, a total of 35 out of 100 pages.

37. The
following observations are then made by the Division Bench in the judgment in
para 16 and 17.

16. A reading of
the aforesaid orders shows that petitioner has been unnecessarily and
deliberately prolonging the matter without any valid reason. The fact of the
matter is that the petitioner basically does not want the case to come to an
end. The action of the petitioner has caused gross wastage of judicial time.
In spite of hearings being granted to the petitioner, petitioner never seems
to be satisfied with the hearings given. Endeavors of Benches of this Court
to give relief by passing interim orders, though such interim orders really
need not have been passed in favour of the petitioner, had made no difference
to the petitioner who has continued with her wayward ways of seeking recusal
from different Benches and for arguing quite a few irrelevant points. The
record shows that petitioner was holding on to a rented accommodation and
from which ultimately she was evicted by means of judicial process initiated
by the landlord and it is possibly for this reason one of her prayers was
're-location to a safe house'. Petitioner has made wild and baseless
allegations against her neighbours of they trying to poison her and similarly
against Max and Apollo Hospitals for allegedly giving false reports and
trying to poison her. Petitioner has also made false and repeated allegations
against the police of trying to kill her. The indiscipline of the petitioner
therefore actually knows no bounds and the present petition therefore does
not deserve any consideration by this Court on merits with respect to the
writ petition on account of complete failure of the petitioner in exhibiting
a bonafide conduct expected of a petitioner in a PIL.

17. It is also relevant at this stage to state that
after the 2010 tenders were cancelled, petitioner has sought to desperately
continue the writ petition by even questioning the subsequent tender process
initiated by the Railways by filing CM No. 7197/2013, and which CM was
nothing but rehash of existing allegations which were made in the writ
petition of alleged forgery and corruption and tenders being floated with
terms to suit G.E. Petitioner cannot be allowed to expand the scope of the
writ petition beyond the causes of action pleaded in the writ petition, much
less by filing additional affidavits and interim applications.

18. Let us at this stage refer to headings and reliefs
of some of the applications filed by the petitioner to show the total lack of
responsibility on the part of the petitioner and total frivolousness in
moving the applications.

38. Starting
with para 18, the writ judgment then merely reproduces the headings and reliefs
of 16 applications filed by the appellant / petitioner in the writ petition. This
takes up 14 pages out of the 100-page judgment.

39. Para 19 of
the writ judgment then states the following.

19. In addition to the above applications there are
various other applications filed by the petitioner effectively alleging that
the lawyers of respondents no.1,6 and 7 and the attorney empowered by the
Board's resolutions of respondent nos. 1,6 and 7 have no right to represent
these respondents though there have been filed on record the vakalatnamas,
the power of attorneys by GE companies in favour of their officers,
notifications and copies of the resolutions of the GE companies authorizing
their officers to conduct the present and other litigations initiated by the
present petitioner. These applications are as under:-

40. Para 19 of
the writ judgment is followed by the mere reproduction of the titles and relief
clauses of 7 applications filed by the petitioner on the issue of the fraud
regarding the authority documents, representation and appearance of the three
General Electric respondents which has been described in detail hereinabove.
This section takes up 16 pages out of the 100-page writ judgment.

41. Then in para
20, the writ judgment merely notes another application filed by the petition ad
again merely reproduces the title and relief clause of the application. This
was an application raising serious conflict of interest issues as the same
counsel had appeared both for the Railway Ministry and the CVC.

42. The next
relevant section of the writ judgment are the concluding observations which can
be divided into 2 parts. Part 1 of the concluding observations in paras 21-24 are
the following.

21. We do realize that mentioning of the aforesaid
orders, applications and other aspects have made this judgment lengthy but we
had no option but to reproduce them, inasmuch as, it was necessary to show
consistent lack of bonafides good faith and honesty of the petitioner with
respect to the present writ petition. The writ petition is therefore clearly
a gross abuse of the process of the law and is liable to be dismissed on
these grounds itself without even going into the averments made in the writ
petition, however, we would hereafter refer to the writ petition, averments
made therein, reliefs claimed therein and certain other aspects to show that
the writ petition is nothing but a case of self serving averments of the
petitioner with no larger public interest involved at all, and, issues raised
of alleged corruption of which neither there is sufficient material for this
Court to entertain the writ petition and nor the averments made are bonafide.
In fact, the petitioner had filed a complaint with CVC with regard to some of
her allegations made in this petition, and the records of this court show
that after replying to the petitioner that the complaint has been looked
into, CVC ultimately had advised closure of the case and this is so stated in
the counter- affidavit of respondents no. 2 and 4/Railways dated 2.7.2012 and
the relevant para of the counter-affidavit is para 3 which reads as under:-

"3. That the Central Vigilance Commission vide its
letter No. 1117/RLY/16/124624 dated 11.04.2011 had forwarded to Railway Board
a copy of e-mail complaint dated 11.01.2011 received in the Commission from
Ms. Seema Sapra, Advocate, New Delhi in which the complainant alleged that
fake Customer Certificate was submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing India Pvt.
Ltd. in connection with Request for Qualification (RFQ) for setting up Diesel
Locomotive Factory at Marhowra, District - Saran, Bihar. On receipt of the complaint,
the matter was got thoroughly investigated and the investigation has revealed
that Clause 3.2 related to "Technical Capacity', inter-alia, mentioned
that the applicant firm should have manufactured and supplied at least 1000
Mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives over the period of last ten years.
Scrutiny of the tender file revealed that as per the Customers' Certificate
attached at page 63 to 113 of the RFQ submitted by M/s. GE Global Sourcing
India Pvt. Ltd., the company had designed, manufactured and supplied total
2326 mainline Diesel Electric Locomotives over a period of last ten years.
Thus, it is noticed that even if the Customer Certificate issued by
Kazakhstan Railway for 10 No. of locomotives supplied by M/s. GE Global
Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. is discarded, the firm was fulfilling the 'Technical
Capacity' criteria, as the requirement as per clause 3.2 of the RFQ is only
1000 locomotives over the period of last ten years. Thus, investigation has
found that the firm M/s. Global Sourcing India Pvt. Ltd. has not derived any
advantage by submitting the scanned copy. Therefore, no substance was found
in the allegation. The report of investigation was sent to the Central
Vigilance Commission and the Central Vigilance Commission after perusal of the
Investigation Report and the comments of the administrative authorities
thereon has advised closure of the case vide CVC's ID No. 117/RLY/16/145435
dated 19.09.20111 (Annesure R-1)." (underling added)

22. When we read the writ petition and its annexures we
doubt whether even notices at all should have been issued in this writ
petition. We have already reproduced above the ratios of various judgments of
the Supreme Court which require that it is necessary that there must be basis
for the averments made in a PIL i.e the averments must be prima facie
substantiated and unless that is done, writ petition is liable to be thrown
out at the threshold itself. Further, for looking into corruption, a
statutory body being the CVC exists, and it is not that merely if the
petitioner utters 'mantras' of corruption therefore merely on that ground
alone PIL should be entertained. This we are stating because in innumerable
number of pleadings of the petitioner and in the hearings before the Court,
allegations are made that the respondents are wanting to cover up corruption
and in fact petitioner has also (without directly saying so), made innuendoes
against different Benches of this Court of trying to cover up corruption by
not giving the reliefs as claimed in the writ petition by allowing of the
writ petition. There are allegations galore against all and sundry be they
officials of GE, officials of Railways, officials of Planning Commission,
Advocates, the respondents, officials of contesting respondents, PM office,
Senior Advocates of Supreme Court, retired and sitting Judges of Supreme
Court etc etc. The writ petition therefore being based only on self-serving
averments and self-serving correspondence initiated by the petitioner herself
was liable to be dismissed even without issuing notice and in any case the
writ petition definitely need not have been continued after the main reliefs
of cancellation of 2010 tenders became infructuous as the Government had
cancelled the tenders and so recorded in terms of the statement of the then
ASG made before the Division Bench of this Court on 31.5.2013. Petitioner, as
is her won't, even before this Bench which concluded her arguments, kept on
arguing that in spite of cancellation of the tenders, GE be black-listed and
that this Court takes cognizance and cancel even of the subsequent tender
process of 2013. In our opinion, if a petitioner in a PIL is allowed to keep
on expanding the contours of the PIL petition to keep on including every
subsequent tender then a PIL will never come to an end. We therefore refuse
to look into the allegations made by the petitioner in her various
applications and affidavits by which even the subsequent tender process of
the year 2013 is being questioned by the petitioner. It is impermissible to
expand the scope of the writ petition to a totally new cause of action, and
we therefore decline the prayer of the petitioner to expand the scope of the
writ petition to allow the petitioner to question the 2013 tenders, much less
on account of gross mala fides of the petitioner as already detailed above
and whose entitlement to file a PIL on the subject matters, we reject lock,
stock and barrel.

23. Therefore, the writ petition has become infructuous
so far as the main relief of 2010 tender process is concerned. Issue of
black-listing of G.E is an issue which is for the Railways to look into
inasmuch as black-listing can only be done under a specified process of a
government organization and which only the concerned authority can do with
the further aspect that in the opinion of that authority that it is required
to be done.

24. In our opinion, for the sake of argument even if we
take the averments made in the writ petition in some way to have an alleged
case of corruption, however, every case of corruption does not mean that this
Court should entertain PILs unless a grave public interest is involved by it
being substantiated by specific and detailed pleadings and the requisite
independent corroborative documents, but which we find lacking in the present
case. Of course, we may hasten to add that there is a case of corruption has
not even prima facie been made out because the so called allegations of
corruptions are only self-serving averments of the petitioner without any
independent and acceptable substantial material to at all substantiate these
allegations. Petitioner has totally failed to give prima facie substantiation
to her allegations of bribery, corruption etc and just because petitioner is
keen on making self-serving wild and reckless allegations against government
officials, Ministries, GE companies etc etc does not mean that allegations
simply because they are repeated hundreds of times should be read as having
any substance in the same. We would at this stage seek to clarify that we are
not specifically referring to the allegations of corruption and bribery etc
inasmuch, if we will do so, then, we would in fact be looking into merits of
issues with respect to a tender process of 2010 and which we need not at all
do so inasmuch as the 2010 tender process has been cancelled and recalled
long back. At the cost of repetition we would like to state that the
averments made in the writ petition having not been substantiated, hence lack
legal basis, and thus do not in any manner deserve even a cursory and prima
facie acceptance by this Bench.

43. Part 2 of
the concluding observations of the writ judgment in paras 25 and 26 are the
following.

25(i) The second and only other relief, and the second
aspect of the writ petition, is with respect to claim of the petitioner for
being provided security on the ground that she is a whistle blower.
Petitioner in different applications and in the writ petition has claimed
security and even Z+ security on account of averments that there are threats
to her life. What are the threats to the life of the petitioner we have
already reproduced above and which have been noted in different orders passed
by different Benches of this Court. Suffice to say that the said/alleged
threat to the petitioner's life is nothing but a figment of imagination of
the petitioner. None of the neighbours of the petitioner can be said to have
tried to poison the petitioner. None of the hospitals and the doctors alleged
by the petitioner have also ever tried to poison or kill the petitioner.
There is no basis whatsoever in the allegations against Delhi police and some
of its personnel trying to kill the petitioner or harass the petitioner. All
allegations made by the petitioner are baseless and self-serving allegations
which merit total and complete rejection by this Court. In fact, petitioner
is not a whistle blower but is a disgruntled ex-employee of the respondent
no.1 and whose services were terminated prematurely and seeing the conduct of
the petitioner so far as this writ petition is concerned, we are sure that
G.E obviously would not have been able to tolerate the employment of the
petitioner with it.

(ii) We would also like to note that issues of threat
perception and threat assessment are left to the requisite authorities being
the Delhi Police and the Ministry of Home Affairs and both these authorities
have filed affidavits in this Court that there is no threat perception to the
petitioner and we completely agree with the stands taken by the Delhi Police.
The relevant paras of the counter-affidavits of the Ministry of Home Affairs
and Delhi Police read as under:-

Para 1 of Counter Affidavit dated 14.1.2013 of Ministry
of Home Affairs "1. REPLY TO PARA 1 AND 2: In reply to para 1 and 2 it
is humbly submitted by the respondent that provision of security to the
petitioner, is the responsibility of the State Government/UT Administration
concerned. The local police may provide security, if, as per their local
threat assessment, such security is considered necessary. Whereas it is
submitted that with regards to the provision of security to whistle Blowers,
the Government of India has authorized the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC)
as the designated agency to receive written complaints for disclosure on any
allegation of corruption or misuse of office and recommend appropriate action
in respect of employees of the Central Government or of any Corporation
established under anyCentral Act, Government Companies, societies or local
authorities owned or controlled by the Central Government. It is further
submitted that if CVC is of the opinion that the complainants or the
witnesses need protection, it shall issue appropriate directions to the concerned
Government Authorities, i.e. Delhi Police, in the instant case. Similarly,
for her relocation to a safe house on security considerations, it is for the
CVC to take a view as to its necessity and give appropriate directions to the
Delhi Police. A copy of Resolution No. 371/12/2002-AVD-III, dated 21.04.2004
and CVC Office Order No. 33/5/2004 dated 17.05.2004 under file No.004/VGL/26
and its enclosures, is annexed along with and is marked as ANNEXURE A."

Paras 42 and 43 of the counter affidavit dated 11.1.2013
of Delhi Police "42-43. The contents of para 42-43 are denied except
which are specifically admitted hereinunder. Without commenting upon the
petitioners apprehension of danger of her life it is submitted that the
answering respondent in strict adherence to the order of this Hon'ble high
court tried to extend police protection to the petitioner, however on enquiry
it was found that the petitioner had been evicted from the tenanted premises
at G-4, First Floor, Jungpura Extension in pursuance of the Judgement/decree
dated 27.5.2011 passed by the court of Ms. Neelam Singh, ADJ-II, South, Saket
Courts. It is submitted that pursuant to the order of eviction, the owner of
the premises had filed an execution in which the bailiff was appointed for
taking over the possession of the premises.When the bailiff tried to take the
possession the same was resisted by the petitioner leading to seeking of
police protection by the owner. The owner and the bailiff were granted police
assistance and the possession of the premises was taken over on dated
30.5.2012. The copy of proceedings leading to recovery of possession of the
rented premises from the petitioner are annexed herewith as ANNEXURE-R3/2
(Colly). It is submitted that after the possession of the premises were taken
over, the whereabouts of the petitioner could not be ascertained despite
attempts being made through enquiry from various bar Association offices. The
copy of letter sent to bar association offices are annexed herewith as
ANNEXURE-R3/3 (colly). The petitioner has lately sent a complaint through
mail to the commissioner of Police regarding grievance of parking at the
Indian Habitat Centre. The complaint is being looked into by the Concerned
police station and a concerned officer from the police station Lodhi Colony
as tried to contact the Petitioner but despite efforts the petitioner
couldn't be contacted either due to her unavailability at her room or due to
her mobile being switched off. However the concerned official has given
strict instructions to the security at the India Habitat Centre and also to
the Beat staff of the local police to look after and secure the petitioner.
The copy of D.D. entry showing the visit by police official from Police
Station Lodhi Colony are annexed herewith as ANNEXURE-R3/4 (colly).

The complaints made till date by the
petitioner to the police have been duly enquired into and found to be highly
imaginative and/or an exaggerated narration of fact which discloses no cause
for apprehension to either her life or person. The allegation of being
drugged/poisoned at the house by the neighbour through holes in her tenanted
house were enquired and no such hole was found to have existed. Further
allegation of poising through overhead water tank were also frivolous in as
much as there exist a single tank on the top through which water is supplied
to all the 3 floors of the rented premises and no such problem was informed
by anyone living in the other floors of the building. The petitioner had made
numerous complaints however nothing substantial was found in the complaint
despite enquiry/investigation by the police officials. It is submitted that
the allegation of terrorization/intimidation by the Delhi police are entirely
false and frivolous. The allegation of conspiracy by the police to isolate
the petitioner are also baseless and ill founded. The allegation of being
terrorized by alleged harassment by the police are also baseless."

(emphasis is mine)

26. We completely agree with the stands taken up by the
Delhi Police and the Ministry of Home Affairs in this regard. Petitioner in
the guise of making allegations of threat to human life has in fact caused
misery, harassment and turmoil to innumerable number of people including her
neighbours, Delhi Police, doctors and even advocates of this Court. Though it
may not be relevant for the purpose of disposal of this writ petition, it may
be noted that the petitioner who is an advocate has been restrained from
going into the canteens of the lawyers of this Court because petitioner kept
on making allegations even against lawyers that lawyers were trying to poison
her. Petitioner therefore only has access to this court as a lawyer for
approaching the courts and not for using the areas to which other advocates
have access such as canteens etc.

44. The final
observations and directions of the writ judgment in paras 27 and 28 are
reproduced below.

27. In view of the above, this writ petition is a
totally frivolous and a mala fide petition, and it is also an abuse of the
process of the law. The present writ petition was never a genuine PIL and it
was only an action of a disgruntled employee who was thrown out of her
employment and such a petitioner/employee through this PIL is seeking to take
vendetta against her erstwhile employer with whom she has enmity. By the time
the judgment in the case was reserved vide order dated 3.2.2015, volumes of
the writ petition had reached to number 35 ending at page nos. 12,440.

28. In view of the above, the various orders passed by
this Court, and the wild and reckless allegations made by the petitioner
against all and sundry including Hon'ble Judges of this Court and the Supreme
Court, the present is a classic case of abuse of PIL process where the writ
petition must be and is accordingly dismissed with exemplary costs of Rs. 2
lacs to be deposited within 3 months with the Delhi High Court Legal Aid
Services Authority and payment of which costs shall be a condition precedent
for the petitioner to initiate any fresh independent litigation on any of the
subject matters of the present proceedings. All pending applications stand
disposed of accordingly.

VALMIKI J. MEHTA,J

P.S.TEJI, J

MARCH 02, 2015

45. The
Division Bench of the Delhi High Court in its judgment dated 2.3.2015 issued in
Writ Petition Civil. No. 1280/2012 has referred to this petition as a PIL and
called the filing of this petition an abuse of the process of the court.

46. In
response, the following submissions are made:

(i)Writ Petition Civil. No. 1280/2012
was never a PIL. It was not filed under Delhi High Court PIL rules, it was
never described as a PIL, and it was never treated as a PIL by the Delhi High
Court itself from February 2012 onwards when it was filed until February 2015.
(eg. It was never listed as a PIL before the PIL Bench.) The writ judgment for
the first time after a three-year period and out of the blue mislabels it as a
PIL contrary to the record.

(ii)The appellant herein, who was the
petitioner in the said writ petition had filed it in person as a whistleblower
who is both complainant and a witness in the complaints made against General
Electric. She had been subjected to physical harm, intimidation, attack and
targeting and the said writ petition was also filed invoking her right to life
and seeking protection and safe housing. As such the petitioner had an interest
in the matter and it was not filed on behalf of a third party but on her own
behalf. The petitioner had invoked her fundamental right to life before the
Delhi High Court in its Article 226 jurisdiction.

(iii)The Division Bench in the writ
judgment merely refers to the fact that the petitioner’s contract had been
terminated by General Electric Company and from that alone concludes that the
petitioner had filed the writ petition in abuse of the court process to seek
vengeance. Note that neither was this issue argued before this Division Bench
and neither did the Division Bench query the petitioner on this issue. Instead this
conclusion was arrived at by this Division Bench without a hearing, and
contrary to the material before it, and appears to be a device to taint the
petitioner.

(iv)The petitioner is a lawyer who was
employed by General Electric Company through its Indian subsidiary to provide
legal counsel to the GE Transportation Division. The assignment of the
petitioner was not only to provide legal advice for General Electric’s bids for
the Indian Rail tenders and the Transportation business as such, but she was
also given the responsibility to oversee compliance with the law. The
compliance function in a corporate is really to ensure that no laws or policies
are violated. The petitioner was required under internal policies of General
Electric to report any instances of violation of the law by GE entities or
employees or even contractors. GE internal policies also prohibit any form of
retaliation against someone exposing wrong-doing.

(v)In addition, the code of conduct on
ethics prescribed by the Bar Council makes it obligatory for a lawyer, even and
especially an in-house lawyer to refuse to permit a client to use the legal
services of such lawyer to commit unlawful and unethical acts. An in-house
lawyer would become an accessory to crime if she did not report that her legal
services were attempted to be used/ or ended up being used in the commission of
a crime.

(vi)The petitioner first made complaints
internally to General Electric officers as was her right and her obligation.

(vii)Even before these complaints could be
investigated, and while a preliminary internal GE exercise of scrutiny of her
complaints was still in progress, the petitioner’s contract was suddenly and it
is submitted unlawfully terminated. This amounted to retaliation against the
petitioner and was a violation of GE’s own policies and US whistleblower laws.

(viii)The petitioner immediately complained
the day her contract was terminated that she was being retaliated against and
there was an attempted cover-up.

(ix)This was followed by an internal GE
investigation which further attempted a cover-up.

(x)Under the law on disclosure and
client confidentiality, the petitioner had the duty to report these legal
violations to the authorities in both the United States and in India. She
accordingly did that. She also made the media and the lawyer community aware of
her whistleblower complaints as a safety measure.

(xi)The petitioner was being physically
harmed, drugged and poisoned and was being targeted, intimidated and defamed.
Fearing for her life, the petitioner filed Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012 in
the Delhi High Court.

(xii)The material before the Delhi High
Court establishes that the petitioner made serious and substantiated complaints
of corruption by General Electric.

(xiii)The material before the Delhi High
Court also establishes that the petitioner was targeted, attacked, defamed and
physically harmed.

(xiv)Even the documents pertaining to the
petitioner’s employment with GE, the termination of her contract and subsequent
communications from GE establish that the petitioner’s expose was not a case of
vendetta or vengeance. Some of these crucial documents were part of the Delhi
High Court writ record.

(xv)As such, the writ judgment of the
Division Bench does great violence to the petitioner when it wrongly and
without any basis whatsoever mis-labels her, a whistleblower, as someone who
filed an abusive PIL to seek “vengeance”.

47. The
Appellant will file the full set of orders passed in the writ petition in a
separate volume along with her comments thereon.

43 Orders reproduced in judgment

49 Orders neither mentioned nor reproduced in judgment

2.3.2012

5.3.2012

7.3.2012

25.4.2012

9.5.2012

14.5.2012

16.5.2012

25.5.2012

28.5.2012

29.5.2012

30.5.2012

3.7.2012

13.7.2012

19.7.2012

12.10.2012

8.11.2012

19.11.2012

26.11.2012

30.11.2012

5.12.2012

10.12.2012

12.12.2012

19.12.2012

20.12.2012

21.12.2012

7.1.2013

14.1.2013

16.1.2013

23.1.2013

24.1.2013

30.1.2013

1.2.2013

4.2.2013

15.2.2013

27.2.2013

18.3.2013

1.4.2013

11.4.2013

12.4.2013

18.4.2013

22.4.2013

26.4.2013

29.4.2013

1.5.2013

3.5.2013

16.5.2013

22.5.2013

28.5.2013

30.5.2013

31.5.2013

18.7.2013

22.7.2013

22.8.2013

30.9.2013

7.10.2013

9.10.2013

11.10.2013

8.1.2014

10.1.2014

24.1.2014

28.1.2014

30.01.2014

11.2.2014

07.3.2014

14.3.2014

18.3.2014

20.3.2014

25.3.2014

27.3.2014

01.4.2014

3.4.2014

15.4.2014

22.4.2014

24.4.2014

29.4.2014

06.5.2014

08.5.2014

15.5.2014

18.7.2014

31.7.2014

25.9.2014

10.11.2014

20.11.2014

01.12.2014

02.12.2014

10.12.2014

17.12.2014

16.1.2015

19.1.2015

20.1.2015

22.1.2015

03.2.2015

2.3.2015

48. The
appellant will file a separate note on the applications which were dismissed by
the Division Bench without a hearing.

16 Applications
whose prayers reproduced in judgment

24 Applications
not mentioned in the judgment

CM No.2770/2012

CM No.8677/2012

CM No.7012/2012

CM No.7175/2012

CM No.7176/2012

CM No.7317/2012

CM No.8856/2012

CM No.18324/2012

CM No.18325/2012

CM No.18642/2012

CM No.18862/2012

CM No.19197/2012

CM No.
19370/2012

CM No.19501/2012

C.M.No.19683/2012

CM No.19820/2012

CM No.105/2013

Top of Form

CM No. 326/2013

CM No.428/2013

CM No. 522/2013

CM No.847/2013

CM No.1223/2013

CM No.1679/2013

CM No.2477/2013

CM No.3380/2013

CM No.3855/2013

CM No. 5007/2013

CM No. 5008/2013

CM No.6096/2013

CM 6417/2013

CM No.7197/2013

CM No.10492/2013

C.M.No.10493/2013

CM No.14194/2013

C.M.No.18969/2014

CM No.19473/2014

C.M.No.19474/2014

C.M.No.20069/2014

CM No.1881/2015

C.M.No.1882/2015

2 applications filed on 3.2.2015
which could not even be listed. (filing nos. 59802/2015 and 62111/2015.

49. The
Division Bench of the Delhi High Court in its judgment dated 2.3.2015 issued in
Writ Petition Civil. No. 1280/2012 also wrongly suggests that the petitioner
made a prayer for safe housing in the petition only because she had been
evicted from her rented premises. This suggestion which the Division Bench
makes without any examination of the material before it and without hearing the
petitioner cannot be further from the truth about the petitioner’s situation
which is public knowledge and how she has been forced into homelessness for now
almost 4 complete years and how that homelessness has been used to keep the
petitioner vulnerable to the targeting directed at her.

50. In
response, the following submissions are made:

(i)The petitioner was staying alone in a
rented floor at G4, Jangpura Extension at a monthly rent of Rs. 25000 per month
since 2008.

(ii)After the petitioner made her
whistleblower complaints against GE in July/August 2010, her landlady asked her
to vacate. The petitioner sought time.

(iii)The landlady filed an eviction suit
in December 2010.

(iv)The petitioner was being drugged and
poisoned in that house where she was living alone. She was unable to contest
that suit or to follow its progress.

(v)In July and August 2011, the
petitioner for the first time made complaints that she was being drugged and
poisoned.

(vi)In July and August 2011, the
petitioner noticed gaseous fumes in that flat and she wanted to leave it. She
moved in with a friend in Gurgaon.

(vii)The Petitioner returned to the house
and the targeting continued. Toxic chemicals were introduced into the house to
harm the petitioner.

(viii)The petitioner decided to move out.
She temporarily checked into the India Habitat Centre using her membership.

(ix)The petitioner then looked at
properties to rent and entered into a lease agreement for a one-room set in
Defence Colony. She paid an advance of about 1 lakh Rs. by check. She even made
a check payment to a property dealer.

(x)She moved into the Defence Colony
premises and asked her family to help remove the heavy furniture from the
Jangpura house because she intended to vacate it.

(xi)The petitioner was drugged and
poisoned in the Defence Colony premises.

(xii)The Petitioner then begged her family
to let her stay with them. The petitioner moved to her family’s home in Gurgaon.
She was drugged and poisoned there. When she confronted her family members, she
was told to leave.

(xiii)The petitioner ended up moving back
into the Jangpura house because she had nowhere else to go.

(xiv)The petitioner continued to be
targeted in the Jangpura house. She was also targeted when she left the house.

(xv)From then onwards the petitioner
became more careful about her food and drink.

(xvi)In December 2011 and January 2012,
the Petitioner started to re-pursue her complaints against General Electric.

(xvii)The targeting intensified. She
started noticing her surroundings and the house and started to make police
complaints.

(xviii)The
petitioner started going to the courts.

(xix)Fearing for her life, the petitioner
told the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court on 17 February 2012 that she was
being poisoned.

(xx)Finally, the petitioner filed the
writ petition in February 2012.

(xxi)Notice was issued on this petition on
7.3.2012. On 25.5.2012, an order was passed in the writ petition directing the
police and other authorities to protect the petitioner and ensure that she was
not harmed.

(xxii)On 30.5.2012, while the petitioner
was in the Delhi High Court for the writ petition, the police participated in
evicting the petitioner from the house.
All her belongings including medical records of complaints of poisoning
were taken away in her absence and have not been returned till date. The
petitioner was left with nothing but her car, her laptop bag which thankfully
had her passport, and the clothes on her back.

(xxiii)After
spending one night at Claridges hotel for Rs.13000, the petitioner moved into
India Habitat Center where she stayed till the first week of July 2012.

(xxiv)The
petitioner then moved into the YWCA blue triangle hostel where she stayed for
about 3 weeks.

(xxv)Next the petitioner stayed at the
Ambassador Hotel for about 3 weeks.

(xxvi)Next the
petitioner stayed at Hotel Janpath for a few days.

(xxvii)The petitioner by this time had run
out of money and was surviving on her credit card and some funds given to her
by people.

(xxviii)The petitioner even contemplated
disappearing and went to Jaipur by bus. However, when she was targeted there
and she realised she would be followed, she returned to Delhi.

(xxix)On 1 October
2012, the petitioner went to the Delhi Police headquarters. Instead of helping
her find accommodation, the petitioner was assaulted on those premises. An
attempt was made to harm her.

(xxx)The petitioner moved into Red Fox
Hotel in Mayur Vihar for a few days. The Petitioner stayed at a few other
places.

(xxxi)The
petitioner moved into a dharamsala at the Tibetan refugee colony at Majnu Ka
Tila and stayed there approximately from November 2012 until the last week of
February 2013. The appellant had run out of funds by now and was surviving by
requesting lawyers for money. She spent the months of November and December
2012 and January 2013 and a part of February 2013 staying at this cheap
dharamsala in the Tibetan refugee colony of Majnu ka tila in a room costing Rs.
500/750 per night. She did not have sufficient warm clothes that winter. The
appellant was asking her colleagues and so-called friends for financial help
but they refused. Finally, the appellant could not even pay a bill of Rs.
40,000 at the dharamsala for two months. After she complained she was being
targeted there, the appellant was asked to vacate that place.

(xxxii)The appellant with no money and with
her classmates and so-called friends refusing to help, started to sleep in her
car from 26 February 2013.

(xxxiii)The appellant was initially targeted
by policemen in her car and attempts were made to depict her as a prostitute.
She was parking her car in the WWF lane, in Defence Colony, outside the World
Bank, and in Pandara Park.

(xxxiv)Later the petitioner started parking
her car in Rabindra Nagar close to the residence of Special Commission of
Police P N Aggarwal.

(xxxv)In June 2013, the petitioner stayed
for about two weeks at the Ginger Hotel in East Delhi.

(xxxvi)The Petitioner again started sleeping
in her car in Rabindra Nagar.

(xxxvii)In June 2013, an attempt was made to
abduct the petitioner in the middle of the night from Rabindra Nagar.

(xxxviii)In June 2013, the petitioner was
repeatedly harassed in her car at night. Once when she went to the
police-station seeking compliance with a court protection order, she was asked
by the SHO to sleep in the police station. On another occasion, a glass bottle
was thrown at her in the presence of the police outside Tughlaq Road police
station in the middle of the night.

(xxxix)All though the rest of 2013, the
petitioner continued to sleep in her car.

(xl)The petitioner not only spent the
entire scorching summer of 2013 sleeping in her car, but also spent the entire
winter of 2013-2014 sleeping in her car.

(xli)From around December 2013 onwards,
toxic chemicals started to be sprayed on the petitioner while she was asleep in
her car at night.

(xlii)After Special Commissioner of Police
P N Aggarwal retired, he used his security guards to prevent the petitioner
from sleeping in her car near his house. She then started sleeping in her car
outside the houde of Special Commissioner of Police Dharmendra Kumar in
Rabindra Nagar.

(xliii)From around December 2013, the
petitioner also started sleeping in her car outside gate 8 of the Delhi High
Court.

(xliv)The petitioner continued to sleep in
her car until 5 June 2014 when she fractured her left fibula on a very hot day
in Gurgaon. She was there looking for a place in a mall to work on this matter
because she had no place to stay.

(xlv)The petitioner was taken to Artemis
Hospital in an ambulance. Her leg was placed in a cast. She had no place to
stay. She finally checked into the Red Fox Hotel in Aerocity that night where
she stayed until 9 June 2014. She was in a wheel-chair.

(xlvi)On 9 June 2014, the petitioner’s left
ankle was deliberately dislocated by Dr. Anuj Malhotra in Fortis Hospital at
Vasant Kunj.

(xlvii)The
Petitioner left the hospital on 9 June 2014 with her leg in an aircast boot.
She actually picked up her car, drove to Ambience Mall to access the internet
to find a place to stay. The petitioner had a freshly fractured fibula. She
also had a freshly dislocated ankle that she had not been informed about.

(xlviii)The petitioner made a booking at
Oberoi Maidens hotel at a reduced price and then on 9 June 2014 drove her car
to the Maidens hotel and checked in there.

(xlix)The petitioner stayed at the Maidens
Hotel till 23.6.2014. She was targeted at the Maidens Hotel. When she
complained the hotel wanted her to leave. On 23.6.2014, the police was used to
assault the petitioner who was in a wheel-chair. Her laptop was broken and her
phone sim card was destroyed by a policeman. She was forcibly taken to Aruna
Asaf Ali Hospital. Attempts were made to create false medical records. She was
suddenly asked to leave by the Police.

(l)That night on 23.6.2014, the
petitioner slept in her car outside gate 8 of the Delhi High Court.

(li)The next morning, the petitioner
checked into the YWCA on Parliament Street where she stayed for a few days.

(lii)The petitioner then moved into the
YMCA for a few days where she stayed until 18 January 2014. On 18 July 2014,
the petitioner attended the hearing in the Delhi High Court using a walker
along with her aircast boot to move. This was the first day that the petitioner
walked since 5 June 2014 using both legs after the fracture and ankle
dislocation.

(liii)Since then, the petitioner has had to
stay in hotels, guest-houses, B&Bs etc. because she could not sleep in her
car with her fractured leg and dislocated ankle. She has had to request lawyers
for money to do this. Some lawyers have literally made her beg for money and
others have turned her away empty-handed or handed over pittances. Some have
chosen to insult her.

(liv)The petitioner has been forced to
raise money for accommodation because she could not sleep in her car with her
dislocated ankle.

(lv)The petitioner was wearing the
aircast boot until the end of September 2015. She is now wearing high ankle
support hiking boots made by Solomon which cost her Rs. 13000. She needs these
boots because the ankle is still dislocated. The petitioner can now walk though
very carefully and slowly. She needs to take care that the ankle which has
healed in a dislocated position is not stressed or damaged or twisted. She also
needs pain relief but instead of medicines the petitioner uses turmeric as an
anti-inflammatory and pain-killer. The petitioner cannot squat. She needs to
keep her left leg and foot in a comfortable position while sitting and lying
down.

(lvi)Right from May 2012, the petitioner
has been in a strange situation. She needs accommodation and she needs money.
She is able to work but she continues to be targeted. She has also been defamed
as being mentally ill. She has no place to stay. She continues to be poisoned
wherever she stays in temporary accommodation because she is unable to control
her surroundings and environment. It has been made impossible for her to find
employment in these circumstances. She has requested several lawyers to help
her rent a place but all have refused. If she could rent a place, she would
need much less money. Living in hotels and guest houses means that the
appellant has needed to spend over a lakh each month simply on accommodation
all of which she has had to raise from lawyers. If she could rent a place, she
could also control access to the accommodation and thus make it difficult for
those targeting her to do so. Meanwhile she continues to be chronically
poisoned.

(lvii)The petitioner would like to describe
what it has meant being homeless and being forced to sleep in her car for over
a year and 3 months. In the height of summer, the petitioner slept in her car
drenched in sweat and at the mercy of mosquitoes despite lathering exposed skin
with insect-repellent. She first tried sleeping curled up on the back seat of
her Santro car but later slept on the back seat with one door open and her legs
and feet sticking out. It has meant no access to proper and private toilet
facilities. The petitioner has had to urinate on the road side and on occasion
even defecate on the road-side or in the open. She has had no access to a
toilet at night even when she had her period. She was forced to change her
sanitary pads out in the open in the dark. In the early mornings, the
petitioner faced a lot of difficulty when she desperately needed to use a
toilet. Once it was daylight, it was not possible for the petitioner to use the
open. On those desperate occasions the
petitioner had to rush to the Lodhi Gardens, or the IIC or India Habitat Center
or coffee shops in Defence Colony Market or to the Delhi High Court as early as
7 am to use the toilet. The petitioner even stopped having dinner just so that
she would not need to use a toilet urgently in the morning. The petitioner had
no place to bathe. She would use a wash cloth to clean herself. Later, the
petitioner actually started bathing in the toilets in the Delhi High Court
lawyers chambers very early in the morning. She had no place to wash her
clothes or to dry them.

(lviii)The petitioner obviously had no place
to cook food.

(lix)The petitioner did not have
sufficient warm clothes for the winter of 2012-2013.

(lx)For the winter of 2013-2014, the
petitioner managed to raise some funds to buy two warm winter jackets and a
sleeping bag. She spent this winter sleeping sitting upright in the front
passenger seat of her car. She would wear all her warm clothes in layers, slip
into the sleeping bag, wear a warm cap, cover her torso with two blankets and
then sleep on the front passenger seat with the back reclined. This winter she
slept in her car parked in Rabindra Nagar close to the house of Special
Commissioner of Police Dharmendra Kumar.

(lxi)In the mornings, the petitioner would
go looking for tea and breakfast. Then she would spend the day either in the
Delhi High Court, or in a mall or library if the court was closed. In the
evenings she would again go to restaurants, cafés and malls or hotels and stay
there as late as she could before having to again sleep in the open in her car
parked on public streets.

(lxii)All of this happened while the writ
petition remained pending unheard for 3 years before the Delhi High Court.

51. Before
further describing how the petitioner has been deliberately kept homeless since
30 May 2012, some important facts to establish how rendering the petitioner
homeless was a well-planned strategy. The petitioner submits that ever since
she became a threat to General Electric in July 2010, every aspect of her life
has been manipulated by General Electric acting through its agents. The facts are as follows. Soon after the
petitioner made complaints at General Electric, her landlady asked her to
vacate. The petitioner was being drugged and poisoned from July 2010 onwards.
As a result, the petitioner was unable to contest that suit. In fact, until
July 2011, the petitioner hardly left her home. The petitioner complained of
poisoning in July/August 2011 and wanted to leave that house. She made several
attempts to do so in 2011 even going to the extent of signing a lease and
moving into another rented premises in Defence Colony.

52. In
a police affidavit dated July 2012 that was filed in the writ petition, it
emerged for the first time that the eviction suit against the petitioner was
decided way back in May 2011. Despite that, the petitioner was not even
informed about the eviction decree either by the landlady or by her lawyer
Trideep Pais all through 2011. Not once was she told that an eviction order had
been passed and that she should vacate. The first time that the petitioner
became aware of the eviction order of May 2011 was on 3 April 2012. On that
day, the petitioner was going through medical records from July and August 2011
when she had complained of poisoning. She made two email complaints in the
morning of 3 April 2012 pointing out that Max Hospital had manipulated the
petitioner’s chest Xray films. That same day, after 2 pm, a group of men
entered the petitioner’s home after breaking a gate lock and started breaking
the front door locks. They pushed the petitioner aside. The group of men were
shouting that the petitioner and her belongings would be thrown out. There was a lawyer in the group who told the
petitioner he had an eviction decree against her. The petitioner asked for a
copy of this decree but this was refused. The group of men dispersed after the
petitioner complained to the police on email but not before damaging the front
door and stealing a set of house keys which were lying near an open window sill
accessible from the front staircase. The petitioner made complaints about this.

53. For
the rest of April and May the petitioner continued to be targeted. Finally, as
stated above, the petitioner was evicted in her absence by the police on 30 May
2012. The petitioner was in the Delhi High Court on 30 May 2012 for a hearing
on an application in her whistleblower writ petition. Her phone was on silent.
After 4 pm, the petitioner saw a text message sent around 12 pm informing her
that persons were present at her house and she was being evicted.

54. The
following questions arise which show that the appellant was deliberately
targeted:

(i) The eviction suit was decreed
against the petitioner in May 2011, why was no attempt made to evict her until
April 2012?

(ii) The documents produced with the
police affidavit show that the execution decree was obtained by misrepresenting
to the Court that the rented premises had been vacated and were empty.

(iii) What was the reason for
incident of 3.4.2012? Prima facie it appears that the intent that day was to
use a group of men to break open the locks and enter the house, to overpower
the petitioner and to destroy property and evidence as part of an eviction
process? The intent seems to have been to destroy the medical records that the
petitioner was complaining about.

(iv)Coming to 30 May 2012, why was
the eviction carried out in the absence of the petitioner. Why was her personal
property including medical records taken away? Why was the petitioner not given
any notice or an opportunity to pack her belongings and leave?

(v) Given that the eviction orders
were not sought to be enforced for a whole year, why was the eviction carried
out right then without notice?

(vi) On 25 May 2012, the Delhi High
Court had passed an order directing the Police to ensure that the petitioner was
not harmed. Was it then not the duty of the Police to at least inform the
petitioner in advance of the proposed eviction? Was it not then the duty of the
police to at least permit the petitioner the opportunity to pack her belongings
and leave? The property that was taken away included crucial documents which
had evidentiary value for the writ petition. Did the police not participate in
destroying evidence. The property that was taken away included the petitioner’s
entire wardrobe with expensive clothes and shoes, her laptops, her printer, her
hard drives, her financial papers including check books and bank statements,
her car registration papers, her books, her academic papers including years of
research from the petitioner’s time overseas, her PhD research materials, her
personal effects including personal items like photographs and mementos of her
deceased father, some furniture, an AC, kitchen appliances and utilities.
(Other large items like the fridge and beds had already been removed by the
petitioner’s family in September/October 2011.) Was this property of the
petitioner not illegally removed in her absence without notice and without
giving her an opportunity to remove it? This property has still not been
returned to the petitioner even after nearly 4 years. The petitioner had a
large, expensive and extensive wardrobe which the police dispossessed her of on
30 May 2012. Now she has been reduced to wearing the few cheap clothes she can
buy after raising funds. She spent a winter without warm clothes while her
belongings including expensive and unused expensive winter jackets were
unlawfully taken away by the police from the petitioner’s home.

(vii)Why was this eviction done in
this manner? First it enabled destruction of evidence. Second it resulted in
greater financial burden on the petitioner’s dwindling resources. Third this
would have enabled the police to plant material among the petitioner’s
belongings. Numerous attempts have been made to falsely label the petitioner
mentally ill. The police could have planted false prescriptions or medicines
among the petitioner’s belongings.

(viii) The fact that this eviction
happened 4 days after the Delhi High Court protection order also meant that the
police did not have to protect the petitioner in those premises, and the police
did not examine the petitioner’s complaints that the house had been rigged to
introduce toxic chemicals and that the house was being entered into in the
petitioner’s absence.

(ix) In view of the facts above, the
suggestion in the writ judgment that the petitioner filed the writ petition (in
February 2012) seeking safe housing because she had been evicted (which
happened on 30 May 2012) is not only perverse but again amounts to a great
violence against the petitioner.

55. A
few disturbing aspects on this issue of the petitioner’s homelessness.

(i) Justice P K Bhasin refused to
pass any order on the day this eviction happened.

(ii) The petitioner filed an urgent
application seeking shelter in July 2012.

(iii) Justice Rajiv Shakdher
adjourned this application to October 2012 without granting interim relief.
When the petitioner asked him where she would stay, he replied I have no clue.
In October 2012, he adjourned the writ and this application to April 2013 again
without granting interim relief.

(iv) In December 2012, Justice
Nandrajog mentioned the possibility of the petitioner being accommodated in a
women’s hostel but no orders were passed.

(v) In February 2013, a Bench headed
by Justice Geeta Mittal adjourned the writ and this application to May 2013
despite the petitioner’s requests for an urgent hearing. The order records that
the Bench stated it had no time.

(vi) In April 2013, without hearing
the petitioner, Justice Geeta Mittal’s Bench suggested that the petitioner
consider accommodation from the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare. Since the
only accommodation this Ministry offers is Nari Niketans the petitioner rightly
rejected this suggestion. The petitioner would have essentially been in a
prison in a Nari Niketan. In May 2013, again without hearing the petitioner,
Justice Geeta Mittal passed an order permitting the South East district Delhi
Police about whom the Petitioner had complained in Jangpura to take the help of
an unknown NGO to “protect” the petitioner. This NGO is based in a slum at the
outskirts of South East Delhi, This order would have been used by the Police to
use this NGO to confine the petitioner.

(vii) In October 2013, despite the
petitioner sleeping on the streets, a Bench headed by Justice P K Bhasin adjourned
the Writ and the application for shelter to January 2014 thus compelling the
petitioner to sleep in her car that winter.

(viii) In May 2014, when the
petitioner again pleaded for urgent hearing of the matter because she was
sleeping on the street, Justice Sistani laughed and remarked but you should
sleep in your house. The matter was then adjourned unheard to 18 July 2014.

(ix) As already mentioned, on 5 June
2014 the petitioner fractured her fibula due to circumstances arising from her
enforced homelessness.

(x) The only orders that the
petitioner needed was that the government be directed to help her find/ rent
safe accommodation where the police would have been forced to protect her in
compliance with court orders. The petitioner could have raised funds to pay for
this accommodation. She could have started working and earning again once she
secured safe accommodation.

(xi) But multiple judges of the Delhi
High Court ignored the petitioner’s plight. A whistleblower against one of the
most powerful corporates in the world was forced to sleep in her car for over 1
year and 3 months despite being before the Delhi High Court in a whistleblower
right to life petition. This whistleblower has been maimed for life because of
the deliberate dislocation of her left ankle in June 2014 as part of the
conspiracy to eliminate and silence her. This happened while the petitioner was
before the High Court and while there were court orders for her protection.

(xii) The Bar Council of India and
the Bar Council of Delhi also ignored the petitioner’s plight, as did the
Supreme Court Bar Association and the Delhi High Court Bar Association all of
whom the petitioner wrote to for assistance and support.

56. In
effect the writ judgment of this Division Bench of the Delhi High Court is not
based upon the facts or upon the material before the court. It is a perverse
and falsely depicts the appellant -whistleblower as someone who abused the
court process and filed a malicious petition seeking revenge and seeking housing
from the State because she was evicted.

57.
Material to establish that the
appellant whistleblower is being targeted and faces a grave threat to her life
is being filed in a separate volume. The appellant has posted some of this
material on the internet at the following links. The appellant is also filing a
separate affidavit in response to paras 25 and 26 of the writ judgment
(reproduced above in para 43) where the Division Bench again without hearing
the petitioner and without even considering the material before it comes to the
perverse finding that the whistleblower has not been targeted and harmed. This
judgment fails to consider even the petitioner’s rejoinder filed to the alleged
police affidavit and the other material before it that established that the
police failed to comply with court protection orders and failed to register and
investigate the petitioner’s complaints of targeting. The police instead
falsified complaints against the petitioner. False statements were made by the
Police before the Court.

Dr S K Das of Max Healthcare attempted to poison Seema
Sapra, General Electric whistleblower complaining of poisoning by prescribing
Haloperidol as a sleeping aid in August 2011
http://gewhistleblower.blogspot.in/2016/01/dr-s-k-das-of-max-healthcare-attempted.html

Dr Anuj Malhotra of Fortis Hospital deliberately
dislocated the left ankle of General Electric whistleblower Seema Sapra on 9
June 2014 in an attempt to force her into surgery as part of attempts to
eliminate her http://gewhistleblower.blogspot.in/2016/02/dr-anuj-malhotra-of-fortis-hospital.html

Evidence that Delhi Police Inspector Ajay Gupta
falsified police records against General Electric Company whistleblower Seema
Sapra in June 2013 after facilitating attacks on her as SHO of Tughlaq Road
Police Station http://gewhistleblower.blogspot.in/2016/02/evidence-that-delhi-police-inspector.html

Video evidence of the two men following General
Electric whistleblower Seema Sapra on 9 March 2012 in Saket Select Citywalk
Mall
http://gewhistleblower.blogspot.in/2016/02/video-evidence-of-two-men-following.html

58. Moving now
to the contempt notice issued against the appellant for the events of 6.5.2014
which is the subject matter of the impugned judgment.The appellant has
reproduced hereinabove the email complaint she made on 6.5.2014 which describes
in detail the events of that day. The facts are as follows. The appellant is a
highly qualified and accomplished woman lawyer who was forced to make
whistleblower corruption complaints against General Electric. She was drugged
and poisoned and targeted. She managed to file Writ Petition Civil 1280/2012
before the Delhi High Court in February 2012 seeking protection. Instead of
being protected, the appellant continued to be drugged, poisoned and viciously
destroyed ffrom 2012 until 2014 while the petition languished unheard in the
Delhi High Court and while the Bench ignored the petitioner’s plight. In May
2014, the petitioner had been homeless for 2 years. In May 2014, the petitioner
had been sleeping in her car parked on the streets for over 1 year and three
months. She had already spent one scorching summer and bone-chilling winter
sleeping in her car. In May 2014, the petitioner was being poisoned. Toxic
chemicals were being sprayed on her, inside her car while she was asleep. Toxic
chemicals were also being released in the petitioner’s vicinity or on her
person when she tried to work on her whistleblower case in public spaces. Toxic
chemicals were also being released near the petitioner on Delhi High Court
premises. In May 2014, the petitioner had been financially broke for almost 1
year 10 months. She had been surviving by requesting lawyers for funds for
almost 1 year 10 months. She was finding it extremely difficult to raise funds
as lawyers were being told not to help her. In May 2014, the appellant was
being defamed as mentally ill. She was being socially and professionally
ostracized. Lawyers were being told not to interact with her.

59. The
appellant was desperate to get her right to life and whistleblower petition
heard. She desperately need some interim relief, particularly some orders that
would help her find a place to stay. She needed protection. She needed the
registration of a medico-legal case for poisoning and a medical examination for
poisoning.

60. Instead her
matter was not getting heard. A Division
Bench of Justice SK Misra and Justice S P
Garg which had started hearing the matter suddenly recused in April 2014
without indicating a reason two days after passing an order recording the
appellants statement that she was beingpoisoned.

61. On 6 May 2014 the matter was listed before
Justice Muralidhar and Justice Vibhu Bhakhru neither of whom could hear the
matter. The appellant wanted to press for interim relief on shelter and
protection before the summer vacations. As the matter was going to get
adjourned on 6 May 2014, the appellant wanted to press for a short date. As
described in the email dated 6 May 2014, Justice Vibhu Bakhru misled the
appellant as to the timing when the writ petition would be heard and he and
Justice Muralidhar adjourned the writ petition to 23 May 2014, a Friday before
the summer vacations when it was almost certain the matter would not be heard.
The appellant requested Justice Bhakhru to modify the date. The appellant was
told she should file an application for change of date. The appellant tried to
persuade Justice Bhakhru to change the date. He threatened to have the
appellant evicted using court security. It was then that the appellant in a
spontaneous tearful emotional outburst asked Justice Ravidra Bhat and Justice
Vibhu Bhakhru if J. Bhat and J. Bakhru ifthey did not care that the appellant, a
whistleblower and a lawyer was being poisoned and if they wanted to find the
appellant dead before WP Civil 1280 of 2012 could be heard. It was then that
the appellant in a moment o emotional distress stated aloud words to the effect
- if J. Bakhru was so corrupt that he did not care that the appellant was being
poisoned.

62. After this
incident the appellant went to Justice Muralidhar’s court and at her request
the date in the matter was changed from 23 May to 8 May 2014.

63. On 8 May
2014, the writ petition was listed before Justice Sistani and Justice V K Rao.
Justice V K Rao recused from this matter because he disclosed in court that he
did not hear matters where Advocate Mr Vkram Dhokalia was appearing as they
were from the same lawyers chamber. Mr Vikram Dhokalia was appearing for one of
the respondents. The writ petition again ended up getting adjourned unheard to
15.5.2014. On 15.5.2014, the writ petition was listed before Justice Sistani
and Justice A K Pathak who refused to hear the matter that day and adjourned it
without hearing to 18 July 2014. So the appellant was again in a position where
she had no hope of relief till 18 July 2014. The appellant continued to be
poisoned.

64. On 5 June
2014, as a direct result of her homelessness and her being poisoned, the
appellant fractured her left fibula. On 9 June 2014, the appellant was
deliberately harmed by none other than a doctor who was used to deliberately
dislocate the appellant’s left ankle. An attempt was made to force the
appellant into surgery. The appellant was targeted with toxic chemicals even
while her leg was fractured. She was assaulted by police in June 2014 after she
complained of poisoning, who destroyed her laptop and phone and forcibly took
her to Aruna Asaf Ali hospital where attempts were made to falsify medical
records.

65. On 18 July
2014, the appellant appeared before Justice Sistani and Justice A K Pathak in a
cast and using a walker. She had no laptop and as she was using electronic
copies of the court record she could not argue. That day both Justice Sistani
and Justice Pathak shouted at the appellant. They intimidated her. Justice
Pathak insisted that she argue that day. They took no notice of the fact that
the homeless appellant was now before them with a fracture and a dislocated
ankle. They ignored the petitioner when she narrated how the police had
destroyed her laptop. The order passed that day does not even mention the
appellant’s fracture. In any case it was impossible for the matter to be heard
on 18 July as that was a Friday and there was a tea party and full court
reference for a retiring judge. It is submitted that Justice Sistani would have
known about these engagements on 18 July in May when this date was given. The
matter was now adjourned unheard to 31 July 2014. The appellant was now in an
even more difficult situation than in May 2014. In August 2014, the appellant
learnt that her ankle was dislocated. On 31 July 2014, with her fracture and
dislocated ankle and with no funds to buy a laptop the appellant was forced to
seek an adjournment. The matter went to 25 September 2014. And so it continued.

66. The
appellant submits that she has full and deep respect and regard for the rule of
law, the judiciary, the courts and the judicial process. In a moment of feeling
desperate, and of great emotional distress on account of being forced to
survive in very difficult circumstances while being denied access to justice,
the appellant crossed the line and uttered a statement without thinking before
Justice Ravindra Bhat and Justice Vibhu Bakhru. Looking back the appellant
agrees that she should not have said those words, But it was a spontaneous
outburst on the spur of the moment and the words were spoken without reflection
or premeditation.

67. The
appellant offers her full and unqualified apology for making that un-necessary
and inappropriate statement in court.

68. However as
described above, the appellant hopes that this Hon’ble Court will appreciate
that very difficult circumstances and the strain of continued targeting for 4
years caused the appellant to have this outburst in court. The appellant’s
conduct was not malicious and was not intended to scandalize or disrespect the
court or to bring it into disrepute.

69. The
appellant therefore requests this Hon’ble Court to take a lenient and
sympathetic view of the appellant’s emotional outburst and to accept her
apology.

70. The
Appellant, a woman lawyer who has always respected the law, a whistleblower,
facing a threat to her life, who has been viciously targeted, who has been
chronically poisoned certainly does not deserve the harsh punishment that the
impugned judgment imposes. The appellant
will be placed in greater danger if she is imprisoned. She will be drugged and
poisoned in prison.

71. The
impugned judgment has also directed that the appellant, an advocate enrolled
with the Bar Council of Delhi will not be allowed to argue, whether as an
Advocate or in person, except in her defence, before any Bench of this High
Court or any court or tribunal subordinate to this High Court for a period of
two years from today. It is submitted that this direction not only amounts to
denying the appellant her right to access justice, but also amounts to an
unlawful suspension of her right to practice law as an advocate for two years.
The Division Bench has clearly erred in issuing this direction in the impugned
judgment.

72. It
is submitted that as clarified by a constitution bench of the Supreme Court in
Supreme Court Bar Association of India v. Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409, the
Delhi High Court Division Bench while disposing off CONT. CAS(CRL) 2/2014 had
no jurisdiction to debar the appellant from practicing the profession of law
before it and before subordinate courts for a period of 2 years. The law as
laid down by the Supreme Court is clear that only the Bar Council can suspend
or abrogate an advocate’s right to practice law and that too after following
due process.

73. Reliance
is placed upon the following passages from Supreme Court Bar Association of
India v. Union of India (1998) 4 SCC 409.

" The question which arises is whether the Supreme
Court of India can while dealing with Contempt Proceedings exercise power
under Article 129 of the Constitution or under Article 129 read with Article
142 of the Constitution or under Article 142 of the Constitution can debar a
practicing lawyer from carrying on his profession as a lawyer for any period
whatsoever, We direct notice to issue on the Attorney General of India and on
the respondents herein. Notice will also issue on the application for interim
stay. Having regarding to the importance of the aforesaid question we further
direct that this petition be placed before a Constitution Bench of this
Court."

And

“This Court is indeed the final appellate
authority under Section
38 of the Act
but we are not persuaded to agree with the view that this Court can in
exercise of its appellate jurisdiction, under Section
38 of the
Act, impose one of the punishments, prescribed under that Act, while
punishing a contemner advocate in a contempt case. 'Professional misconduct'
of the advocate concerned is not a matter directly in issue in the contempt
of court case. while dealing with the contempt of court case, this court is
obliged to examine whether the conduct complained of amounts to contempt of
court and if t he answer is in the affirmative, than to sentence the
contemner for contempt of court by imposing any of the recognised and
accepted punishments for committing contempt of court. Keeping in view the
elaborate procedure prescribed under the Advocates
Act 1961 and the
Rules framed thereunder it follows that a complaint of professional
misconduct is required to be tried by the disciplinary committee of the Bar
Council, like the trial of a criminal case by a court of law and an advocate
may be punished on the basis of evidence led before the disciplinary
committee of the Bar Council after being afforded an opportunity of hearing.
The delinquent advocate may be suspended from the rolls of the advocates or
imposed any other punishment as provided under the Act. The enquiry is a detailed
and elaborate one and is not of a summary nature. It is therefore, not
permissible for this court to punish an advocate for "professional
misconduct" in exercise of the appellate jurisdiction by convening
itself as the statutory body exercising "original jurisdiction".
Indeed, if in a given case the concerned Bar Council on being apprised of the
contumacious and blame worthy conduct of the advocate by the High Court or
this Court does not take any action against the said advocate, this court may
well have the jurisdiction in exercise of its appellate powers under Section 38 of the Act read with Article 142 of the Constitution to proceed suo moto and
send for the records from the Bar Council and pass appropriate orders against
the concerned advocate. in an appropriate case, this Court may consider the
exercise of appellate jurisdiction even suo moto provided there is some cause
pending before the concerned Bar Council, and the Bar Council does "not
act" or fails to act, by sending for the record of that cause and pass
appropriate orders.

However,
the exercise of powers under the contempt jurisdiction cannot be confused
with the appellate jurisdiction under Section
38 of the
Act. The two jurisdictions are separate and distinct. We are, therefore,
unable to persuade ourselves to subscribe to the contrary view expressed by
the Bench in V.C. Mishra's case because in that case the Bar Council had not
declined to deal with the matter ad take appropriate action against the
concerned advocate. Since there was no cause pending before the Bar Council,
this court could not exercise its appellate jurisdiction in respect of a
matter which was never under consideration of the bar councils.

Thus,
to conclude we are of the opinion that this court cannot in exercise of its
jurisdiction under Article
142 read
with Article
129 of the
Constitution, while punishing a contemner for committing contempt of court,
also impose a punishment of suspending his licence to practice, where the
contemner happens to be an Advocate. Such a punishment cannot even be imposed
by taking recourse to the appellate powers under Section 38 of the Act while dealing with a case of
contempt of court (and not an appeal relating to professional misconduct as such).
To that extent, the law laid down in Re: Vinay Chandra Mishra, (1995) 2
S.C.C. 584 is not good law and we overrule it.

An
Advocate who is found guilty of contempt of court may also, as already
noticed, be guilty of professional misconduct in a given case but it is for
the Bar Council of the State or Bar Council of India to punish that Advocate
by either debarring him from practice or suspending his licence, as may be
warranted, in the facts and circumstances of each case. The learned Solicitor
General informed us that there have been cases where the Bar Council of India
taking note of the contumacious and objectionable conduct of an advocate, had
initiated disciplinary proceedings against him and even punished him for
"professional misconduct", on the basis of his having been found
guilty of committing contempt of court. We do not entertain any doubt that
the Bar Council of the State or Bar Council of India, as the case may be,
when apprised of the established contumacious conduct of an advocate by the High
Court or by this Court, would rise to the occasion , and take appropriate
action against such an advocate. Under Article
144 of the
Constitution "all authorities civil and judicial, in the territory of
India shall act in aid of the Supreme Court". The Bar Council which
performs a public duty and is charged with the obligation to protect the
dignity of the profession and maintain professional standards and etiquette
is also obliged to act "in aid of the Supreme Court". It must,
whenever, facts warrant rise to the occasion and discharge its duties
uninfluenced by the position of the contemner advocate. It must act in accordance
with the prescribed procedure, whenever its attention is drawn by this Court
to the contumacious and unbecoming conduct of an advocate which has the
tendency to interfere with due administration of justice. It is possible for
the High Courts also to draw the attention of the Bar Council of the State to
a case of professional misconduct of a contemner advocate to enable the State
Bar Council to proceed in the manner prescribed by the Act and the rules
framed thereunder. There is no justification to assume that the Bar Councils
would not rise to the occasion, as they are equally responsible to uphold the
dignity of the courts and the majesty of the and prevent any interference in
the administration of justice. Learned counsel for the parties present before
us do not dispute and rightly so that whenever a court of record, records its
findings about the conduct of an Advocate while finding him guilty of
committing contempt of court and desires or refers the matter to be
considered by the concern Bar Council, appropriate action should be initiated
by the concerned Bar Council in accordance with law with a view to maintain
the dignity of the courts and to uphold the majesty of law and professional
standards and etiquette. Nothing is more destructive of public confidence in
the administration of justice than incivility, rudeness or disrespectful
conduct on the part of a counsel towards the court or disregard by the court
of the privileges of the bar. In case the Bar Council, even after receiving
'reference' from the court, fails to take action against the concerned
advocate, this court might consider invoking its powers under Section 38 of the Act by sending for the record of the
proceedings from the Bar Council and passing appropriate orders. Of Course
the appellate powers under Section
38 would be
available to this Court only and not to the High Courts. We, however hope
that such a situation would not arise.

In
a given case it may be possible, for this Court or the High Court, the
prevent the contemner advocate to appear before it till he purges himself of
the contempt but that is much different from suspending or revoking his
licence or debarring him to practice as an advocate. In a case of
contemptuous, contumacious, unbecoming or blameworthy conduct of an
Advocate-on-Record, this court possesses jurisdiction, under the Supreme
Court Rules itself, to withdraw his privilege to practice as an
Advocate-an-Record because that privilege is conferred by this court and the
power to grant the privilege includes the power to revoke or suspend it. The
withdrawal of that privilege, however, does not amount to suspending or
revoking his licence to practice as an advocate in other courts or Tribunals.

We
are conscious of the fact that the conduct of the contemner of VC Misra's
case was highly contumacious and even atrocious. It was unpardonable. the
contemner therein had abused his professional privileges while practising as
an advocate. he was holding a very senior position in the Bar Council of
India and was expected to act in a more reasonable way. He did not. these
factors appear to have influenced the bench in that case to itself punish him
by suspending his licence to practice also while imposing a suspending
sentence of imprisonment for committing contempt of court but while doing so
this court vested itself with a jurisdiction where none exists. The position
would, have been different had a reference been made to the Bar Council and
the Bar Council did not take any action against the concerned advocate. In
that event, as already observed, this court in exercise of its appellate
jurisdiction under Section
38 of the Act
read with Article
142 of the
Constitution of India, might have exercised suo moto powers and sent for the
proceedings from the Bar Council and passed appropriate orders for punishing
the contemner advocate for professional misconduct after putting him on
notice as required by the proviso to Section
38 which
reads thus:-

" Provided
that no order of the disciplinary committed of the Bar Council of India shall
be varied by the Supreme Court so as to prejudicially affect the person
aggrieved without giving him a reasonable opportunity of being heard."

but
it could not have done so in the first instance.

In
V.C. Mishra's case, the Bench, relied upon its inherent powers under Article 142, to punish him by suspending his licence,
without the Bar Council having been given any opportunity to deal with his
case under the Act. We cannot persuade ourselves to agree with that approach.
It must be remembered that wider the amplitude of its power under Article 142, the greater is the need of care for this Court
to see that the power is used with restraint without pushing back the limits
of the constitution so as to function within the bounds of its own
jurisdiction. To the extent, this Court makes the statutory authorities and
other organs of the State perform their duties in accordance with law, its
role is unexceptionable but it is not permissible or the Court to "take
over" the role of the statutory bodies or other organs of the State and
"perform" their functions.

Upon
the basis of what we have said above, we answer the question posed in the
earlier part of this order, in the negative. The writ petition succeeds and
is ordered accordingly”.

74. The impugned
judgment as well as the earlier writ judgment dated 2.3.2015 are both issued by
the same Division Bench of the Delhi High Court comprised of Justice Valmiki
Mehta and Justice P S Teji. As stated above, the appellant’s defence to the
contempt notice required her to point out that the writ judgment was wrong,
contrary to the material before it, perverse and resulted in covering up the
corruption complaints against General Electric and the complaints of the
petitioner of targeting and poisoning. As such it was correct and justified on
the part of the appellant to request that the Bench of Justice Valmiki Mehta
and Justice P S Teji recuse from the contempt case. This recusal request was
wrongly rejected. When the appellant attempted to argue before this Bench that
it had incorrectly dismissed the writ petition, this Bench did not permit the
appellant to make her submissions. Yet the impugned judgment in the contempt
matter itself relies upon the writ judgment.

75. The Division
Bench of Justice Valmiki Mehta and Justice P S. Teji issued bailable warrants
against the appellant earlier in 2015 in the contempt case when she failed to
appear for a single hearing. The appellant was being drugged and poisoned. This
Bench then insisted that the appellant furnish an address even though it was
aware and was again made aware that the appellant was homeless since May 2012
and had no fixed address.

76. On
30.10.2015, this Division Bench closed the right of the appellant to file a
reply in the contempt case. This despite the appellant’s submission that she
was being targeted and poisoned and was homeless. The appellant was then
directed to argue. The appellant did not even have the court record of this
contempt case with her. Even the limited submissions made by the appellant
during the hearing on 30.10.2015 before this Bench have been misrecorded in the
order and in the impugned judgment.

77. It is
submitted that Para 10 of the Order dated 30.10.2015 which is relied upon in
the impugned judgment does not summarize all the submissions, arguments and
defence of the appellant. Neither does this paragraph correctly record the
appellant’s limited submissions made in court that day.

78. The impugned
judgment incorrectly records that the appellant had relied upon Justice K.G.
Balakrishnan’s statement as Chief Justice of India that litigants should not
hesitate to report judicial corruption. This was not a part of the appellant’s
submissions in this contempt case. On 30.10.2015 both the contempt cases
against the appellant were listed together. There is an earlier contempt case
from 2012 where the appellant had asked Justice Muralidhar to recuse from
hearing a connected matter OMP 647/2012. It was in her applications in the
other contempt case of 2012 that the appellant had relied upon the said
statement of Justice K.G. Balakrishnan. On 30.10.2015 the Division Bench of
Justice Valmiki Mehta and Justice P S Teji themselves asked the appellant
specifically if she had relied upon such a statement by the Chief Justice. The
appellant had answered that she had. This question and answer took place in the
context of Criminal Contempt case 3 of 2012 and not Criminal Contempt case 2 of
2014. After this exchange, the Division Bench had insisted that the appellant
first address them on the 2014 matter. They ten refused to hear the 2012 matter
which was adjourned and is still pending. Yet the impugned judgment incorrectly
includes this as one of the appellant’s arguments in Criminal Contempt case 2
of 2014. Paragraph 7 of the impugned judgment therefore misrecords the defence
of the appellant. Instead as stated hereinabove and in her email of 6.5.2014,
the appellant made the statement spontaneously in an emotional outburst without
prior reflection in a situation of emotional distress.

79. The impugned
judgment also misrecords the appellant’s submission in para 8. The appellant
submits that it was improper for Justice Bhakhru to be part of the Bench that
issued the notice of criminal contempt to her. The Bench of Justice Ravindra
Bhat and Justice Bhakhru should have placed the matter before the Chief Justice
for the Chief Justice to take a call and if appropriate place the matter before
a different Bench. The appellant did not argue that the Delhi High Court itself
could not hear the contempt case. The impugned judgment incorrectly records
that the appellant made this argument and then conveniently dismisses it as
frivolous.

80. It is also
pointed out that the impugned judgment is wrong when it states in para 8(ii)
that in some cases, criminal contempt matters can be heard by a single
judge. In fact, under the Contempt of
Courts Act, criminal contempt cases must be heard by a Division Bench and
cannot be heard by a Single Judge. This issue is not even relevant for the
present case.

In fact, by
virtue of Section 18 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 a case of criminal
contempt is to be heard by a Division Bench only when the criminal contempt
is one under Section 15 of the Act, and thus except in cases covered by
Section 15 of the Act a criminal contempt can in fact be heard not only by a
Single Judge but the same Single Judge in whose face the contempt is
committed

81. In para 9(ii) the impugned judgment wrongly suggests
that the appellant lied that a long date was first given to her in the writ
petition on 5 May 2014. The impugned judgment states that the court record in
the writ case mentions the date in the order as 8.5.2014. Now as stated above
the facts are that a date for 23.5.2014 was first given. The date was only
changed to 8.5.2014 after the appellant’s strong objections and after the
exchange in the court of Justice Ravindra Bhat and Justice Vibhu Bakhru.
Obviously this date change will not be reflected in the signed order which is
signed only after the court rises for the day in the evening. The order will
only reflect the changed date. The record of the date change will only be found
in the papers and records of the court master’s and court-stenographer’s
notings for the day. In this case, since no order was actually dictated in
court in the writ petition on 6.5.2014. any evidence of the date change will
only be in the court master’s records. There are several witnesses to what
transpired in court on that day and therefore it is submitted that the
appellant will if called upon produce evidence to establish that such a date
change did happen.

82. The appellant had also stated that Justice Vibhu
Bakhru had represented/ appeared for General Electric as a lawyer; that she had
discussed her whistleblower litigation against General Electric with him; and
that she had even emailed Justice Vibhu Bakhru regarding that litigation. In
para 10, the impugned judgment calls these self-serving convenient averments
and states that the Bench disbelieves the same. In response it is submitted
that Justice Vibhu Bhakhru has advised/ represented General Electric as a
client. This is a matter of fact which the appellant is ready to establish in a
trial. The appellant discussed the General Electric whistleblower case with
Justice Vibhu Bakhru in the Delhi High Court premises on more than one occasion
and in the presence of other lawyers. In fact, on one occasion, this discussion
happened with Justice Vibbhu Bhakhru and Advocate Ms Anuradha Dutt in the
ground floor lobby of the Delhi High Court. The topic of this discussion was
whether K Radhakrishnan could be appointed the authorized representative of
General Electric Company for the writ petition. The impugned judgment, fails to
even record that the appellant had sent emails on the subject of her
whisleblower complaints and litigation against General Electric to Justice
Vibhu Bhakhru.

83. Judge Vibhu
Bakhru was appointed as Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court on 17.4.2013.
The appellant sent 72 emails between 6.5.2012 and 17.4.2013 to a large group of
lawyers including Judge Vibhu Bakhru (vibhulegal@gmail.com) all on the subject
of her complaints against General Electric, Writ Petition Civil No. 1280/2012
and her being targeted as a whistleblower. As Judge Vibhu Bakhru’s email was
included in a large mailing list, the appellant’s emails to this mailing list
of lawyers kept going to Judge Vibhu Bakhru’s email even after 17.4.2013 and 19
such emails were sent by the appellant to Judge Vibhu Bakhru’s email address.
Evidence of all these emails being sent is available on the appellant’s Gmail
account records (seema.sapra@gmail.com). These emails are voluminous and are not
being reproduced herein. The Appellant will produce two such specimen emails
along with additional documents in a separate volume. The appellant is ready to
produce all these emails sent by her to Justice Vibhu Bakhru before this
Hon’ble Court.

84. The
appellant had told the Division Bench on 30.10.2015 that she had been harassed
by the police in court that day and that toxic chemicals were also being
released near her on Delhi High Court premises. In para 11 of the impugned
judgment, the Division Bench misrepresents this as a defence to the contempt
notice. It then again relies upon its incorrect observations in the writ
judgment to describe the appellant’s complaint of police harassment on
30.10.2015 as wild and unsubstantiated. The appellant submits that since July
2014, the appellant has been harassed by Delhi High Court security police on
every date when the writ or the contempt matters were listed. Large numbers of
police personnel have been needlessly surrounding the appellant and even
entering the court-rooms when her matters were listed. Some of these policemen
have also been releasing toxic chemicals near the appellant on Delhi High Court
premises. Court-staff and the PSO attached to Justice Valmiki Mehta’s court
have been party to such targeting using the police. On 30.10.2015, before the
hearing, several policemen had surrounded the appellant and some had even
stationed themselves inside the court-room. The appellant took pictures of such
targeting. She made a complaint on email. Thereafter a large group of policemen
surrounded the appellant inside the court-room before the judges entered and
demanded that the appellant hand over her phone. The appellant refused and
complained of such targeting to the Bench. The appellant has video, audio recordings
and pictures to establish police targeting before the hearing on 30.10.2014 and
to establish the participation of court staff attached to Justice Valmiki Mehta
in such targeting.

85. The impugned
judgment is perverse in that it fails to correctly record the appellant’s
submissions.

86. It is
submitted that the appellant’s un-premeditated and spontaneous emotional
outburst on 6.5.2014 does not amount to contempt of court. There was no intent
to scandalize the court or to lower its authority on the part of the appellant.
The statement uttered by the appellant in a moment of great emotional distress
has not caused any prejudice to the administration of justice or to any
judicial proceeding.

87. The recusal
by the Bench of Justice Muralidhar and Justice Vibhu Bakhru was for entirely
different reasons and in fact the recusal order was already made even before
the alleged contempt took place. Therefore, the impugned judgment is entirely wrong
in stating that “The contemptuous statement prejudices or interferes or tends
to interfere with the due course of judicial proceedings inasmuch as the
unsubstantiated contemptuous statement has caused recusal of a Bench of this
Court from hearing the matter on 6.5.2015.”

88. It is
submitted that the appellant’s statement uttered without reflection and in a
moment of distress does not amount to contempt of court. Neither did this
statement interfere with the due course of justice.

89. The appellant
further submits that due process require under the Contempt of Court’s Act has
not been followed and the appellant has been found guilty of contempt in a
summary fashion without even being given an opportunity to defend herself.

90. The
appellant places reliance upon Section 13 of the Contempt of Court’s Act which
provides “Contempts not punishable in certain cases. Notwithstanding anything
contained in any law for the time being in force, no court shall impose a
sentence under this Act for a contempt of court unless it is satisfied that the
contempt is of such a nature that it

substantially interferes, or tends substantially to
interfere with the

due course of justice.”

91. It is
submitted that the alleged contumacious statement of the appellant has not in
any manner interfered with the administration of the due course of justice.
This statement made before Justice Ravindra Bhat and Justice Vibhu Bakhru was
not the reason for the recusal by Justice Muralidhar and Justice Bakhru which
recusal in fact happened before this statement was made.

92. The
appellant submits that her conviction for contempt of court is wrong and
requests that it be set aside.

93. The
appellant submits that the punishment and prison sentence imposed by the
impugned judgment is not only contrary to Section 13 of the Contempt of Court’s
Act but is inappropriate and extremely harsh.

94. It is
pointed out that the appellant had informed Justice Valmiki Mehta and Justice P
S Teji on 30.10.2015 of her intention to pursue her whistleblower and right to
life complaints before the Supreme Court.

It is submitted that the prison sentence will be used to
drug, poison and eventually eliminate the appellant whistle-lower in order to
silence her forever.

95. The
appellant has offered a full, unqualified and unconditional apology for the
statement which she made in the heat of the moment in a deeply distressed
emotional state where she was concerned for her safety and survival. The
impugned judgment incorrectly records that the appellant is not contrite. The
impugned judgment is again incorrect in stating that the appellant had sought
to over-awe different judges, The Appellant will file a separate affidavit
explaining the circumstances of each and every recusal in WritPetition Civil
No. 1280/2012 which is being repeatedly used to target her. The appellant was
the real victim of these recusals.

96. It is denied
that the appellant was “incorrigible” in the hearings before Justice Valmiki
Mehta and Justice P S.Teji in the hearing of Contempt Case 2 of 2014 as stated
in para 15 of the impugned judgment. How can the inability of a person (being
targeted and poisoned) to file a reply be proof of their incorrigibility.

97. The impugned
judgment and the writ judgment both establish that the Division Bench of
Justice Valmiki Mehta and Justice P S Teji has not conducted itself in
accordance with the requirements of judicial propriety and ethics in hearing
these matters and they have not discharged their judicial function in an
impartial, objective and unbiased manner.

98. The
appellant requests that this Hon’ble Court set aside the impugned judgment and
the conviction of the appellant for contempt of court. The appellant also
requests that the extremely harsh and un-called for punishment be set aside.
The Division Bench exceeded its jurisdiction and authority in effectively
suspending the right of the advocate appellant to practice law for two years.
This direction also needs to be set aside.

99. The
appellant also prays that the operation of the impugned judgment be stayed
pending the hearing and decision of this appeal.

100. That the
appellant/ petitioner has not filed any other appeal or petition in any High
Court or the Supreme Court of India on the subject matter of the present
petition.

PRAYER

In the above facts and premises, it is prayed that this
Hon'ble Court may be pleased:

(i)To allow the application for condonation of delay in filing this appeal;

(ii)To set aside the conviction of the appellant for contempt of court;

(iii)To set aside the impugned judgment dated 17.12.2015 of the Delhi High
Court in CONT. CAS(CRL) 2/2014;

(iv)To accept the unconditional and unqualified apology offered by the
appellant and to discharge the contempt notice issued to her by the Delhi High
Court on 6.5.2014;

(v)To stay the operation of the impugned judgment pending hearing and
decision in this appeal;

(vi)To pass such other orders and further orders as may be deemednecessary
on the facts and in the circumstances of the case.

FOR WHICH ACT OF KINDNESS, THE APPELLANT/ PETITIONER
SHALL AS IN DUTY BOUND, EVER PRAY.

Featured post

See the illegal Power of Attorney executed by Alex Dimitrief at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxHBZ8fQxNoQVEJtd0c2LXNOZVk/view This ill...

For more on General Electric corruption in India in connection with the Indian Rail tenders for the proposed diesel locomotive factory at Marhowra and the proposed electric locomotive factory at Madhepura, see